The Deal That Ended the Gaza War — with Dan Senor

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Speaker 10 Today marks arguably the most significant moment since the war in Gaza began two years ago.

Speaker 10 Hamas freed 20 remaining hostages and Israel released some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners as the first step in Trump's proposed peace deal.

Speaker 10 Israel and Hamas haven't agreed on the broader terms yet, but Trump's already declared, quote, the war is over.

Speaker 10 We wanted to speak to somebody who could give us the most inside color nuance around this situation. And there was like one name that immediately came to mind, and that's Dan Senor.

Speaker 10 Dan is a leading expert on Israel and the Middle East. He's the co-author of The Genius of Israel and Startup Nation.
He's also the host of the Call Me Back podcast, which has been

Speaker 10 really just a kind of a lighthouse in a sea of misinformation and

Speaker 10 propaganda and has become kind of the go-to source for information on this on this topic. Anyways, Dan, very much appreciate you taking time on what must be just an incredibly busy day for you.

Speaker 11 Thank you, Scott. It is a crazy, insane day of mixed emotions.
You have been a thought partner with me on this over the last couple years.

Speaker 11 And some of my most meaningful conversations, I mean, this, were not on my podcast, were on your podcast. So I, and, and I, and also having you on mine.
So I was happy to do this.

Speaker 10 So let's, let's start with, it feels that Mark Twain saying, how do you go bankrupt slowly than suddenly? It feels like this deal came about slowly than suddenly.

Speaker 10 Can you give us any nuance into over the last 30 or 15 days, how did this culminate in a deal? Who were the parties? What were the pieces on the chessboard?

Speaker 10 And what were the critical events and or parties in bringing this deal to fruition?

Speaker 11 I've been thinking about that a lot because I think there's a tendency, Scott, you know, what you do and I do and what a lot of other folks do in trying to make sense of moments in

Speaker 11 news cycles. And there's a tendency to just have these snap reactions to events and snap analysis.
And we live in this moment where the moment there's

Speaker 11 one conversation that is reported out between two leaders and then there's suddenly a notification's out and there's whole you know cycles of articles written about a tense conversation or a good conversation and trying to make sense of every minute.

Speaker 11 as opposed to taking a step back and sort of letting events play out and then try to like stitch them together.

Speaker 11 And so when I think about some of the moments that occurred over the last really four weeks, four or five weeks, that there was this instant analysis and consensus on what they meant.

Speaker 11 And we now know it was all kind of wrong. So I'm just going to rattle off some of them because it gets to the question you're asking.
So one

Speaker 11 was Israel's decision to go into Gaza City.

Speaker 11 So keep in mind, as you know, and as I think many of your listeners know, Gaza City was the last stronghold, the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza, sort of like Hamas's Berlin or Hamas's Moscow. And

Speaker 11 Israel had avoided going into Gaza City for most of the war. And now it made clear that it was going in.
And everybody seemed to be against it. Obviously, in the international community.

Speaker 11 leaders, the UN, Europe, everyone was going crazy that Israel cannot do this. Hamas obviously was going crazy saying Israel cannot do this.
And there was even division within Israeli society.

Speaker 11 Israelis were against it. The Israeli military was against it.

Speaker 11 And it was certain that it was just going to prolong the war, result in many more IDF casualties, result in many more Palestinian casualties, and risk the hostages.

Speaker 11 And everyone just thought this was the craziest thing in the world.

Speaker 11 What we now know is that Israel's decision to defy all that pressure and that backlash and say, no, we're going in no matter what. And when the world expected, well, at least the U.S.

Speaker 11 will reign in Israel and not let Israel do this, President Trump said, nope, Israel can do this and should do this. And there's no daylight and we have Israel's back.
And that,

Speaker 11 at the time, everyone thought that was crazy. And what we now know, and even critics of that decision,

Speaker 11 who I just recorded a podcast with today, concede, in retrospect, that more than anything flipped out Hamas because they realized that there was no one reigning in Israel, that this notion that the Hamas could always use the hostages and the threat to the hostages as leverage against Israel

Speaker 11 would always reign in Israel. That the fact that that leverage or that currency was suddenly being devalued led Hamas to realize we are on our own.
We may want to get back to the negotiating table.

Speaker 11 That's the first thing.

Speaker 11 The second thing is, I think history will look back at the Israeli operation in Doha, the attempted strike against Hamas, which was a failure and was deemed a failure at the time, I think that had a catalytic effect.

Speaker 11 Even though it was a failure, it sent a message to the region that you in Doha or Abu Dhabi or Riyadh or wherever may think that this war, as controversial as it is in the region, will stay contained to the Israel-Gaza border.

Speaker 11 And the fire is moving around the region, and the fire could come anywhere. And so I think that put a lot of pressure on some of these Arab capitals to tell Hamas enough.
You know,

Speaker 11 we need to get to a deal.

Speaker 11 And then the third and fourth thing, which are items which I think are connected, and this is going to be controversial, I think, for many people listening to this podcast, but I have to say it.

Speaker 11 I think that President Trump's decision to do two things. One,

Speaker 11 to send in Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who we know are not career diplomats, but everyone in the region knows these are two individuals that are extremely close to him.

Speaker 11 And in the Middle East, that matters a lot.

Speaker 11 That the sense of family, the sense of personal connection, when the leaders in the region knew that Jared and Witkoff had been empowered by the president to go close the deal.

Speaker 11 It elevated the stakes for many in the region, including for Hamas. I mean, these guys were in the room with Hamas, like in the last couple of days, in the last few days, directly.

Speaker 11 I think that sent a statement. And then lastly,

Speaker 11 Trump's decision

Speaker 11 to, and this was, and I still don't know if this was, you know, how analyzed this was or this was just an instinct. Hamas said

Speaker 11 in this last round of negotiations, yes, but, right? We will agree. Yes, but.
And they would have some changes. Now, what was the yes part?

Speaker 11 The yes part was for the entirety of these two years, Hamas would never agree to a deal that would release all the hostages at once, ever. There was always a sense that has to be in phases.

Speaker 11 Israel has to withdraw. There has to be a pause in fighting.
Then we'll release a few more spread over a period of time.

Speaker 11 And this was, by the way, even I was guilty of assuming that was the only way it could work. It always has to work in phases.
Hamas will never give up all at once. And at some point, Trump said, no,

Speaker 11 all of them at once. We're not doing phases.
You're not trickling them out. We want them all out at once at the front end of the deal.
And every expert was saying there's no way. He's naive.

Speaker 11 He's foolish. And then Hamas said yes, but.
Now, in a negotiation, when someone says yes, but you can choose to focus on the yes or the but.

Speaker 11 And that many of the negotiations over the last two years have fallen apart because various parties tended to focus on the but.

Speaker 11 And what Trump seemed to do is he took the yes. Wait a minute.
They just said yes, they will release all the hostages at once at the front end.

Speaker 11 Yes, they're going to quibble with some of the other details, but I'm going to bank the yes and deal with the butt later.

Speaker 11 And I do think generally in negotiations, whether it's in business or geopolitics, there's a sense that opportunity can beget opportunity. And I think what the U.S.

Speaker 11 did here was say there's opportunity here.

Speaker 11 Hamas just said yes to something they've never said yes to before. We're going to grab that.

Speaker 11 We'll deal with the details later, deal with their buts, and we're going to figure out how to create momentum around the yes. And that's what happened.

Speaker 11 And once, by the way, everyone in the region, obviously not just the Israelis, but all these capitals, I spoke to

Speaker 11 government officials, diplomats in other countries in the region and Arab capitals. And they were like, wow, the moment everyone seized on the yes, we could start envisioning an end to this war.

Speaker 11 And so that created like, wait a minute, this is in reach. And here we are.

Speaker 10 So I want to respond to each of those three and get and try and

Speaker 10 inspire more color from you. In reverse order, I encourage people, and something I have trouble with, is to be a critical thinker, and that is go issue by issue.
And I find

Speaker 10 I have a negative bias towards almost anything the Trump administration does. I just immediately, reflexively, subconsciously find fault in everything this administration does.

Speaker 10 And I think if you are not giving this administration tremendous credit for what has just happened, you are not a critical thinker.

Speaker 10 Also, I think Jared Kushner, who was my student, I got to think that some of the relationships and trust that he

Speaker 10 fomented and

Speaker 10 cemented during the Abram Accords really paid off here. I got to think he had a lot of these people on speed dial.

Speaker 10 Also, quite frankly, in typical Trump fashion, he seems more focused on the prize than the piece itself.

Speaker 10 We tend to, again, want to have a conversation around whether or not, you know,

Speaker 10 who deserves credit. The Trump administration deserves a ton of credit for this.
So kudos to them.

Speaker 10 The thing that you said that really shocked me and changed my mind because I felt differently about it was the strike on Doha.

Speaker 11 I thought

Speaker 10 they were kind of four for four, the pager operation, most strategic, effective, precision counterterrorist attack in history, right? Taking out around air defenses. We are all safer.

Speaker 10 If I could pick a Nobel Prize, if I was the Nobel Prize committee, it would absolutely go to the IDF.

Speaker 10 I think they have created created much more sustainable peace, a tremendous sacrifice to them strategically with incredible courage, technology, bravery, everything we would hope from from our military.

Speaker 11 They were sort of four for four.

Speaker 10 And then I thought, oh, oh, no, the Doha strike not only was probably a bridge too far, but it was a failure. That was, you know, that was just too far.

Speaker 10 But I don't think there's any ignoring the timing. that it happens and all of a sudden there appears to be new pressure on Hamas.

Speaker 10 And there's, my sense is the two external parties, and tell me if you agree with this, that can put pressure on Hamas

Speaker 11 were Qatar

Speaker 10 and to a certain extent, the Trump administration putting pressure on Israel. You know, there's just a small number of parties that could really put pressure on these groups.

Speaker 10 And it feels like Qatar is one of those parties. And to your point, when Qatar said, You know, Honey Badger don't give a shit.
They will come in and start bombing our cities.

Speaker 11 Shit just got very real for us.

Speaker 10 And we would like to see this come to an end.

Speaker 10 So the Gaza City thing, I had not even, I had, that was not even on my radar screen, but a long-winded way or intro into a question of

Speaker 10 we have a tendency in the U.S. to look at the Gulf as one amorphous region with similar politics and a similar view of Israel.

Speaker 10 And the reality is Qatar is just much different than the kingdom, which is much different than the UAE, which is much different than Bahrain.

Speaker 10 And I had heard you talk about the role role that Turkey played here or will play moving forward. And

Speaker 10 I hadn't even brought that into the calculus. Can you give us a sense for the different players in the region, who played a critical role and who plays a critical role moving forward?

Speaker 11 Yeah, so I'll tick through each of them quickly. And then if you want to focus in on any one of them, just let me know.
Obviously, the Saudis play the most important role in the region.

Speaker 11 Their largest economy,

Speaker 11 the only ones that have a real serious military in the region, and a modernizing leader in Mohammed bin Selman, regardless of what some may think of him,

Speaker 11 he is single-handedly transforming that country. And

Speaker 11 it's understood both in Riyadh and Jerusalem that if there is normalization between these two countries, between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Arab-Israeli conflict is effectively over.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 really the region and big parts of the world will be transformed too as a result of that. You know, the Saudi leadership was planning on normalization with Israel before October 7th.

Speaker 11 And I think, and I know they're still committed to it. Obviously, the details got a little more complicated because of October 7th, but they're still committed to it.
And

Speaker 11 this has been a huge carrot for Israel. Like, what do they need to do to get to Saudi normalization? So, so Riyadh is a major player.

Speaker 11 Qatar, for all the obvious reasons, is a major player here because they have direct channel to Hamas, whereas Saudi Arabia does not. And the Hamas leaders that are not in Gaza are based in Doha.
And

Speaker 11 Qatar, the government of Qatar, had been working for years with Hamas in Gaza, long before October 7th, with, by the way, the knowledge of and

Speaker 11 sort of quiet support of the Israeli and U.S. governments.
And there's a sense that Qatar will play a big role in Gaza after

Speaker 11 the war.

Speaker 11 So

Speaker 11 when Qatar says it's it's now or you've lost us, that matters a lot in these conversations between the Arab countries and Hamas.

Speaker 11 And I'll also add that Qatar is in this unique situation where it's got extraordinary wealth, and yet it's a tiny, tiny country and a tiny, tiny population.

Speaker 11 And I've heard officials from Qatar describe their situation to Kuwait in 1990. Small country, extraordinary wealth, extraordinary natural resources.

Speaker 11 But in one day, in August of 1990, Saddam Hussein's military rolls into Kuwait and declares Kuwait the 19th province of Iraq. And sure,

Speaker 11 Saddam's forces were kicked out of Kuwait, but that Kuwait has never recovered, that its stature and its status in the region never recovered to this day.

Speaker 11 And I've heard officials in Doha basically say, we don't want to be that. We're scared of being that.
And so Doha's MO has been to be friends with everybody. They're close with the U.S.

Speaker 11 They host a U.S. base in Doha, not too far from where the Israelis tried to strike Hamas.
They've opened ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. They've opened ties with the Iranians.

Speaker 11 They've opened ties with the bad actors in Afghanistan, the Taliban. They have a relationship with everybody, with Europe, with Russia, with Putin.
That's their MO. We're friends with everybody.

Speaker 11 And hopefully that will give us some sense of security. And that model, that approach with the strike that Israel

Speaker 11 conducted in Doha, with that, can we be friends with everybody?

Speaker 11 And it's not going to cause problems with us?

Speaker 11 Because right now, Israel striking in the heart of Doha is uh doesn't feel very safe um so that's that's doha egypt and turkey to me are the most interesting stories here turkey after uh the the israeli-us war against iran uh meant that that iran is no longer a real player in the region and it's lost its proxy system hezbollah the houthis are kind of on their last legs the satellite state in in syria and damascus the assad regime which had been in power for 53 years gone.

Speaker 11 And Iran is naked. No air defenses.
Israel and the U.S. having total air superiority over Iran.
So Iran is no longer a player.

Speaker 11 So with Iran out of the region in terms of a power player, still in the region, but not a geopolitical power, the two countries now that matter the most are Israel and Turkey. Turkey is a major.

Speaker 11 To me, Israel and Turkey as the future major players in the region is the big story. And therefore, Erdogan

Speaker 11 has has a lot of capital, political capital. And he also has, and again, this will make some people uncomfortable, but it is the truth.
He also has a very good relationship with Trump.

Speaker 11 And I think Trump pressed on that. There are a lot of things that

Speaker 11 Turkey wants out of the U.S.-Turkish relationship, certainly on the military side. And Erdogan and Trump have a very direct relationship.
So pressing on Turkey to help close Hamas was important.

Speaker 11 And the last country here is...

Speaker 11 is Egypt, which is, you know, we all focus on, and the press just focuses on that there's only one border for Gaza, which is the Israel-Gaza border. When in reality, there's two borders.

Speaker 11 There's the Israel-Gaza border and there's the Gaza-Egyptian border. And Egypt has, Egypt was occupying Gaza before the 1967 Six-Day War.

Speaker 11 And Egypt could have let any number of Gazan Palestinians, war refugees, into Egypt over these last two years.

Speaker 11 did not. They basically barricaded the place.
And Egypt has a big stake in what happens in Gaza next. And they have direct channels with Hamas.
And they are also the second largest recipient of U.S.

Speaker 11 foreign aid. To this day, Egypt is a massive, massive recipient of U.S.
foreign aid.

Speaker 11 And so, for all those reasons, concern about the war spreading throughout the region, close ties to Hamas, and a big recipient of U.S. foreign aid, I think, gave the U.S.
a lot of leverage over Cairo.

Speaker 10 What is the state of Hamas right now? There's a general viewpoint that militarily it's been totally totally neutered.

Speaker 10 As a political body, as a military force, where is Hamas right now?

Speaker 11 I think militarily it is virtually non-existent, meaning it basically had a free run from 2007, call it, to October 7th, 2023 to build up a very sophisticated military.

Speaker 11 Think of it as what we tend to think of it as like a militia or it is a terror group, but the way it was organized, it was organized and trained and developed like a light infantry army

Speaker 11 of a sovereign state. It had battalions and it had a command and control structure and it had the troops, if you will, the terrorist commandos were very well trained.
They had sophisticated weapons.

Speaker 11 They built this tunnel system that was bigger than the London, you know, the tube. It was this massive, massive infrastructure.
So that was a couple decades in the making.

Speaker 11 And so what does Hamas have now? Most of their fighters that have been training over the last number of years have been wiped out or captured by Israel. Its leaders have been largely wiped out.

Speaker 11 It's the sophisticated of its arms, they haven't gotten armed supplies over the last two years. So it's all but non-existent.
However, and here's the however. One,

Speaker 11 What it has done over the last year is it's been losing a number of its fighters. It's been recruiting new and new fighters.
Now, they're not well trained. They're like kids.
You can see it.

Speaker 11 When I speak to IDF soldiers who are in Gaza, they say like at the beginning of the war, they're fighting very sophisticated, well-trained Hamas fighters.

Speaker 11 Now they're fighting like 15-year-old, 14-year-old boys who are just recruited like cannon fodder for Hamas. So it doesn't have the level of sophistication.

Speaker 11 They haven't received new arms, but there are some arms still there. And how we handle or how the U.S.
and all those involved, we're meeting in Sharm-El-Shek today,

Speaker 11 deal with the disarmament of Hamas of what's left of their arms is going to be a very complicated issue.

Speaker 11 Not easy to discern how that's going to be implemented. Israel is very focused now on blowing up the tunnel system in Gaza.
That will take a lot of time and won't be easy.

Speaker 11 So, what exists of Hamas now is basically a political organization in Gaza that has a sort of ragtag militia, which is different from what it had before October 7th, which was a political organization in Gaza and a very sophisticated military.

Speaker 11 Now, that political organization will still try to stay in power and still try to terrorize. And in fact, there are other Palestinians.
There are stories coming out of Gaza today

Speaker 11 about Hamas kind of coming up from the rubble, what's left of Hamas, and imposing retribution on Palestinians that defied them over the last few months, or that they argue worked with the Israelis or worked with the food aid distribution services or whatever.

Speaker 11 There's these, I mean, you can see them online.

Speaker 11 There's these executions going on on of any kind of clans or families or individuals that in some way they believe were not loyal to Hamas during this war. That's playing out now.

Speaker 11 Now, the international press is going to have no interest in covering that. It's brutal, by the way, and ghoulish to see,

Speaker 11 but it is going on. The press won't have interest in it because it doesn't involve Israel.
But what's playing out right now is a fight for the future of Gaza.

Speaker 11 And whether or not there are Palestinians that are willing to stick their necks out and say, we want a different future than what what we've had since Israel pulled out of Gaza

Speaker 11 two decades ago.

Speaker 11 And Hamas is going to try to play in that competition.

Speaker 8 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 10 What does governance likely look like moving forward in Gaza?

Speaker 10 Because even deep into the war, with all of the devastation, I had read that 70% of residents, and I don't know if they're under pressure to say it in a poll, still supported Hamas.

Speaker 10 Whereas the Islamic regime in Iran, it was flipped, only 30% of the populace supports the reigning government there.

Speaker 10 Does Hamas still have

Speaker 10 deep, deep support among the people of Gaza, which likely means they are going to be very involved in governance?

Speaker 10 What does governance look like and what is the current view on Hamas amongst the residents of Gaza?

Speaker 11 Aaron Powell, so it's not clear what governance looks like. look like right now.

Speaker 11 We don't know what exactly it will look like because there's going to be this international stabilization force that's set up.

Speaker 11 There's these Arab countries that are going to step in, the Emiratis, the Egyptians, maybe others. They're going to come in and try to help run the place.

Speaker 11 There's this body, this board that's being created.

Speaker 11 Tony Plair is going to have a big role in trying to create some transitional technocratic. governing body to kind of just run the place.

Speaker 11 So basically get a bunch of technocrats, not ideologues, who can come in and just, you know, get the trains running on time, start thinking about the rebuilding, start thinking about

Speaker 11 getting humanitarian assistance to Palestinians, start dealing with just delivering essential services to Gaz and Palestinians before they really think through who's going to govern this place, who the future of the

Speaker 11 Gazan state or whatever we want to call it will be. So

Speaker 11 I think we don't know. Your point about 70% of Gaz and Palestinians supporting Hamas, when you drill down into that data, what you find is it's not so much that they support Hamas.
And this is both,

Speaker 11 this is going to sound odd to say, it's both an encouraging sign in a counterintuitive sense, but also a depressing sign. They don't necessarily support Hamas.
They support October 7th.

Speaker 11 That's what the polling says. So they say they're frustrated with Hamas and they're frustrated with Hamas running Gaza, but they support the war.
against Israel. And

Speaker 11 that to me is, we're now going to see whether or not that's what they felt the pressure to say, whether or not they can, you know, whether or not when Palestinians in Gaza can start speaking freely, do they say, look, invading Israel and war after war after war against the Israelis was a mistake.

Speaker 11 We set back our own cause and we need to start a new day of coexistence. Whether or not that...

Speaker 11 There is that sentiment out there and there just needs to be oxygen in the space where Palestinians can feel safe articulating it. We don't know.

Speaker 11 The flip side is it could be that Hamas, at least in its hatred and its ideological hostility to Israel, is so entrenched as in Gaza and among Palestinians that no matter who emerges in Gaza, that sentiment, that hold on people's minds cannot be broken.

Speaker 11 We don't know. I mean, what I'm looking forward to is testing it.
I mean, we have to test this now.

Speaker 11 Is there a world in which there can be some leadership in Gaza that can

Speaker 11 be willing to coexist with Israel.

Speaker 11 And I will say it's not easy because to do so, if anyone is willing to stick out their neck and present that kind of vision, they are risking their lives. They are risking their lives.

Speaker 10 To what degree are you concerned that the prisoner swaps, so 20 hostages and whatever remains they can locate, turn back over to Israeli families. In exchange,

Speaker 10 Israel has released some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Speaker 10 To what extent are you concerned, and is there any way to safeguard that we're, I say we, that the Israelis or this deal isn't just repopulating the leadership ranks of Hamas?

Speaker 10 Because if I remember correctly, Sinwar was once a prisoner of Israel and was handed back.

Speaker 10 To what extent are the Israelis,

Speaker 10 you know, against their will, they would not rather it have this way, are they going to just replenish the leadership of Hamas?

Speaker 11 It is one of the things I'm most worried about with with regard to this deal and the previous deals. You're absolutely right.
In 2011,

Speaker 11 Israel did a release, they did an exchange. They released 1,027 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons to get back one hostage, Gilad Shalit.

Speaker 11 And one of those prisoners that was released, as you said, was Yechia Sinwar.

Speaker 11 And the question is, is Israel releasing today a lot of Yechya Sinwars?

Speaker 11 I think there are two problems with this approach of the prisoner releases, and I don't think Israel had a choice, but there are two problems with it.

Speaker 11 One is not only are you replenishing

Speaker 11 Gaza and the West Bank, because some of them are going to return to the West Bank, with these monsters who know how to be monsters and are quite skilled at being monsters, even if they've been in prison for 10 or 20 plus years.

Speaker 11 So you're replenishing, as you said. And two,

Speaker 11 you're sending a message that this works. When you take Israelis hostage, you get

Speaker 11 your heroes, if you will, the biggest monsters from Hamas, out of prison and back home.

Speaker 11 So it has two effects. A, it creates a risk that the people who know how to conduct this kind of violence and wage this kind of mass violence are now free.

Speaker 11 And two, you create an incentive structure because you're saying,

Speaker 11 this is how we get our people out of prison. Is we take Israeli, we kidnap, we steal Israelis.
So I'm deeply,

Speaker 11 this is what I'm among the things I'm most worried about. This is, this is right up there.
And yet, I don't think Israel had a choice.

Speaker 11 The way Israel deals with hostages

Speaker 11 is perplexing to so many people around the world because

Speaker 11 if you look at the standard practice when someone is taken hostage,

Speaker 11 the standard practice, the kind of the

Speaker 11 practices that are that are encouraged by experts in hostage negotiations is to downplay the significance of the hostages, to not make them household names, to not turn them into

Speaker 11 these symbols of a priority for society, even if it is a priority for society to get them back. You shouldn't turn them into these rallying cries because that only increases their value.

Speaker 11 Their stock only goes up in the eyes of Hamas. Wow, look how badly Israel wants these people back.
All the more reason to hang on to them, all the more reason to kidnap more of them.

Speaker 11 So, and yet Israel time and time and time and time again does this.

Speaker 11 Whenever Israelis are taken hostage, you get a version, this was an extreme version, but you get a version of what we've just seen over the last two years, where there's a sense from Israel's enemies that Israel wants nothing more than getting these hostages back on the one hand.

Speaker 11 However,

Speaker 11 if you listen to Hamas's rhetoric, one of the things they have said, including Sinoir himself, was that

Speaker 11 Israel's greatest weakness

Speaker 11 is

Speaker 11 they love life.

Speaker 11 Israel's greatest weakness is Israelis love life, whereas we love death.

Speaker 11 These are not my words. This is Hamas's words, Sinwar's words.
And they thought that the kidnapping, the taking of hostages is

Speaker 11 what would break Israel because they're so weak, that they so desperately want these people back.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 I could argue this so many ways, Scott, and I think about this a lot. On the one hand, of course, it's a weakness for all the reasons you and I were just saying.

Speaker 11 On the other hand, when you watch the images from today

Speaker 11 and you just see this,

Speaker 11 the vibrancy of Israel and the health of Israeli society, and regardless of what you think of its politicians, regardless of what anyone thinks about certain decisions they made here or there, you just watch the, that Israel was willing to risk everything to get back what?

Speaker 11 These musicians and these kids who entered, went to the Nova Fest Music Festival and

Speaker 11 parents and innocent

Speaker 11 people who lived on the wrong kibbutzim

Speaker 11 and were there at the wrong time and just these regular people that are willing to risk everything. And what is Hamas trying to get back? Hamas is trying to get back monsters.

Speaker 11 I mean, literally agents of barbarism, not just agents of chaos, agents of barbarism. That's who they value.
And Israel values the people we're seeing. return today.

Speaker 11 And so I, on the one hand, think it's a weakness for Israel, and I live in fear that Israel is going going to get into this aversion of this jam again.

Speaker 11 And on the other hand, I think one of the reasons Israel endures and Israeli society endures and is a standout and a shining light in an otherwise often very dark region is in part because

Speaker 11 they have this love for life.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I think you're right.

Speaker 10 Tactically, it's a weakness, but strategically, if, you know, I use the term loosely, the brand of Israel, there is something about life and an appreciation and kind of no man or woman left behind.

Speaker 10 It reminds me of the film Superman, where General Zod is watching the devastation they're wreaking, and he all of a sudden pauses and says,

Speaker 10 I found Superman's weakness. He cares.

Speaker 10 You know, if you're looking for moral clarity in geopolitics,

Speaker 10 you're just not going to find it. Of this 20-point plan,

Speaker 10 what are you most worried about?

Speaker 10 It feels, I love what you said earlier, and I think it's actually a great business lesson that if you can, you know, if you're trying to take over a company or a merge with a company, if you can get the price agreed to, you can probably work out the rest, right?

Speaker 10 And what you're saying is the release,

Speaker 10 the hostage and prisoner exchange was kind of the price, and that we should be able to figure out both sides should be able to get to some sort of resolution.

Speaker 10 Of the remaining points to be ironed out, what do you see as the most fraught with risk of an enduring peace here?

Speaker 11 One, the issue of disarmament, which I referenced earlier. So among the 20-point plan, Israel, I mean, Hamas must be disarmed.

Speaker 11 How's that going to happen?

Speaker 11 Who's going door-to-door and tearing Kalashnikovs and

Speaker 11 RPG launchers from the hands of Hamas? Who's doing that? Really, who's doing that? Are Egyptian and Emirati forces doing that?

Speaker 11 Maybe. Are American forces doing that? No.
Are Israeli forces doing that? Israel has basically conceded that it won't be

Speaker 11 by agreeing to this deal. So there's talk about Hamas disarmament, but I don't see Hamas saying they're going to disarm.

Speaker 11 And I don't know who's, because to go door to door and get those Kalashnikovs means every time you quote unquote knock on a door, you're risking your life.

Speaker 11 Which country is signing up to have their lives of their soldiers being risked in order to get Kalashnikovs out of the hands of Hamas 15-year-old boys? So the disarmament piece worries me.

Speaker 11 The role of Hamas in the governing structures, you and I were talking about, not clear.

Speaker 11 I think that if Hamas emerges as a player in a future governing authority in Gaza, it will be a huge win for Hamas that it'll be able to say that, you know, Israel took out Iran, Israel took out Hezbollah, Israel took out, you know,

Speaker 11 had a role in taking out the Assad regime, but we, Hamas, we launched the biggest massacre on the Israeli people, on the Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust, and we're still standing.

Speaker 11 And not only are we still standing, but we actually have a role in the governing authority in Gaza. So the message that sends to the region worries me.

Speaker 11 I can go on and on with some of my other concerns, but I think the biggest caveat to everything I'm saying, which is what is so

Speaker 11 extraordinary to me about this deal, not only getting all the hostages back at once at the beginning, was that Israel is the IDF is still in Gaza.

Speaker 11 The IDF is still in 53% of Gaza according to this deal. Now, it's not in Gaza fighting, and it's not in war, in warfighting mode, but it is there.
It is present.

Speaker 11 It can obviously turn on warfighting mode when it wants to. So, Israel has real leverage now as the details are being sorted out to basically say we're still here.

Speaker 11 And if we're uncomfortable with the way things are going,

Speaker 11 you know, we have a lot of tools as well. So, so I have a lot of concerns.

Speaker 11 Those are mollified by,

Speaker 11 from my perspective, from Israel's perspective, by the IDF being allowed to stay in Gaza until some of these details are sorted out.

Speaker 10 I want to turn to the politics and our governance in Israel. Now, something that I found incredibly distressing but not surprising was the deafening silence from the kind of pro-Palestinian

Speaker 10 advocates here in the U.S. Because my understanding is that this deal is absolutely not what certain factions of the far right and the Knesset wanted.

Speaker 10 They wanted occupations, they wanted settlements, they wanted continued military presence.

Speaker 11 They wanted permanent displacement of the Gaza and Palestinians

Speaker 11 out of Gaza. They want, yeah, you're exactly right.
Everything the hard right wanted, really, I mean this, and I, and I'm a,

Speaker 11 obviously, I'm an advocate and I defend Israel, but I'm a

Speaker 11 critic of the hard right in Israel. I know what they wanted.
Okay. I know what they wanted, and they didn't get it.

Speaker 10 Yeah, and yet this feels like a deal. This feels like, to me, the best or arguably a pretty good deal for Hamas.

Speaker 10 And yet it felt like factions in the U.S.

Speaker 10 were, to me, it outed them as being more concerned with having a vessel for anti-Israel or anti-Semitic hate as opposed to real concern for a deal that brings a lasting peace.

Speaker 10 It just, I saw none of these flags flying or none of these celebrities urging Hamas and Israel to get this deal done.

Speaker 10 It's almost that now, Jiabadi is what you talked about with Egypt or some of the other Arab nations, that they saw the conflict in Gaza, quite frankly, is politically advantageous for them from a brand and a PR standpoint, but weren't that interested in actually helping the people of Palestine.

Speaker 10 And so I'm using that when that's a comment leading up to a question, which I think you agree with.

Speaker 10 But what, give us the state of play of the governance, how Israel, my sense is Israel, the far-right faction, which a lot of people would argue had way too much influence over Netanyahu,

Speaker 10 destabilizing the region.

Speaker 10 There was a fear that there was a kind of wag-the-dog situation here where Netanyahu wanted to be on a war footing, regardless of what the right thing or the humane thing was to do, and that the far right in Israel did not get what it wanted.

Speaker 10 Far from it here.

Speaker 10 Talk about the governance in Israel, how this deal came about, what kind of pressure was applied, and what do you think this means for governance and specifically Netanyahu moving forward in Israel?

Speaker 11 So, a few things. First, I completely agree with you.
We have been lectured and hectored at

Speaker 11 for the last number of months that there was a genocide taking place in Gaza.

Speaker 11 And this was everything from these rallies and protests in places like London and Paris and New York City to, as you said, the Hollywood elite, the, the, you know, the, I don't, anyways, I don't want to start singling out names.

Speaker 11 You know who these people are.

Speaker 11 They were all talking about a genocide. Stop the genocide.
Okay, now, obviously, I strongly dispute that it was a genocide. It wasn't a genocide.

Speaker 11 And we can talk about, I mean, Israel has lost over 900 soldiers in this war, the majority of which, the overwhelming majority of which was after October 7th, meaning it chose to send its youngest, its best, into Gaza to fight.

Speaker 11 Why? If it was a genocide or an attempted genocide, Israel would have just obliterated the place from the air. And it didn't, it sent soldiers in to fight.

Speaker 11 I mean, it's just so, it's so absurd on so many levels, this idea that this was a genocide. That said,

Speaker 11 if you really believed it was a genocide, then when the genocide was quote-unquote stopped, there was actually a peace agreement that stops the genocide, IDF soldiers are not fighting in Gaza today.

Speaker 11 Shouldn't your first moral obligation be to embrace the peace agreement that made that happen?

Speaker 11 And when all these players did not do that, they revealed themselves as not interested actually in the Palestinian people. They were interested in a political weapon against Israel.

Speaker 11 That's what this was about.

Speaker 11 And the cause of quote unquote stopping the genocide became that weapon. Once the genocide, quote unquote, stopped, they weren't interested, first off.

Speaker 11 Second off, on a very practical level, you know, ask yourself, how many Palestinians were actually dying every day?

Speaker 11 Like a lot. We should, we need to say that.
A lot of Palestinians were dying every single day.

Speaker 11 Now, we can debate the numbers and there's a, you know, I have serious issues with the, with the authorities in Gaza who provide these numbers, but it's, it's, it's indisputable that you pick your 50, 70, 90, 10, 15, whatever your number, Palestinians were dying in this war every single day.

Speaker 11 If you care about the Palestinians, today there are no Palestinians, at least from Israeli forces, dying, being killed in Gaza. Shouldn't you celebrate that day and the next day and the next day?

Speaker 11 Every day those are lives saved.

Speaker 11 And the fact that that's not the focus, I think, tells you everything you need to know. As it relates to the Israeli government, I think two things are going on.

Speaker 11 I don't think Netanyahu is as beholden to the hard right and his government as the press often characterized.

Speaker 11 I think, obviously, coalition politics always has its own dynamics, but I don't think they had the gun to his head that everybody thought. Certainly, as we can tell,

Speaker 11 see over events of the last couple of weeks. His government could fall over this deal, and yet he still pushed it through.

Speaker 11 Israel now is going to have to go to elections at some point between now and October of 26. According to Israeli election law, the next election has to happen by October of 26.

Speaker 11 And so now the big question is,

Speaker 11 does Netanyahu go to elections soon? Does he go to elections very soon?

Speaker 11 Does he, quote unquote, take the win and say, I'm now, you know, only I could have gotten this deal done. Only I could have gotten the hostages back.

Speaker 11 And only I now can take this energy and this talent that you saw as I maneuvered the geopolitics of Israel and the region and the world and got the Iran threat eliminated.

Speaker 11 I got the Hezbollah threat eliminated. And now I'm the guy to make Saudi normalization happen.

Speaker 11 And that's why I need to continue serving in government. And I'm staking my election on Israel's full normalization into the region.
That's what this is about. That's one way he could run.

Speaker 11 The other way he could run is actually just delay the election and not and push off calling elections well into uh next year and try to start making the normalization happen and then run on that i think the latter is a riskier course for him because i think on the one hand there's a lot of promise in terms of normalization i think we're going to see movement from saudi arabia with israel i think we're going to see movement from syria and i think we're going to see movement from indonesia so there could be a lot that happens on the normalization front but as we know diplomacy and and and international politics can take weird twists and turns and i think um netanyahu would probably want to run as the guy who can deliver it rather than the guy who's in the muck of trying to deliver it.

Speaker 11 But either way, he's going to have to go to elections. And of course, I'm not talking about the elephant in the room.

Speaker 11 He was the prime minister under whose watch the biggest catastrophe for the Jewish people, as I said earlier, in a single day since the Holocaust occurred.

Speaker 11 And that notion, that reality has never been tested in Israeli politics. People say, well, Golda Meir in 1973, after the Yom Kippur War, she got re-elected right away.
It's true.

Speaker 11 But the Yom Kippur War

Speaker 11 was catastrophic for Israel. It was 19 days.

Speaker 11 It was in retrospect compared to what Israel's just gone through in terms of the shattering of Israel, the trauma for Israel.

Speaker 11 Nothing else comes close to it. And Netanyahu was prime minister when it happened.
And I don't know if that's...

Speaker 11 If that's surmountable. It's just, it's, you know, we have these periods, Scott, where you say, what's the first election going to be like in the U.S.?

Speaker 11 What's the first presidential election going to be like after COVID? Or what's the the first presidential election going to be like after the 2008 global financial crisis?

Speaker 11 Or what's the first election going to be like after 9-11? We know we go through these periods.

Speaker 11 And the truth is, it's very hard to know ever what happens, what's going to happen in these elections because on the one hand, after 9-11, Bush got re-elected.

Speaker 11 And not only did he get re-elected, he won the midterms in 2002, right after 9-11. Of course, there was no way the Republicans would have won the White House in 2008 after the global financial crisis.

Speaker 11 So these things can go in all these different directions. It's very hard.

Speaker 11 When you have these seismic events in the life of a nation, trying to predict what the politics would be, I think is it's totally unprecedented.

Speaker 11 You don't have no historical precedent in Israel's case to point to in terms of how the electorate will react. I do think you will see one phenomenon.

Speaker 11 this time in Israeli politics is the emergence of what they call the Miloimniks. The Miloim is a Hebrew word for the reservists.
There are all these very... So

Speaker 11 Israel's standing army is pretty small. It depends on this incredible reserve force, which are people in their 20s and 30s, basically, who have day jobs and kids and

Speaker 11 cool jobs and tech and whatever. And

Speaker 11 over 300 to 400,000 of them fought, the reservists and the

Speaker 11 standing army in the last two years. That's a higher percentage of Israeli society than the percentage of American, the American population that fought in World War II.

Speaker 11 So this war touched everybody, every family. And all these, it's a small country, as a friend of mine just said, but it's a big family, Israel.

Speaker 11 And these reservists, who are very talented, impressive people, you know many of them.

Speaker 11 For the first time, I'm hearing from them, you know what? Maybe I should run for office. You know, I never thought about a career in politics.
I was working in tech in Tel Aviv.

Speaker 11 I worked in an elite unit. I served in an elite unit in the IDF, but I was basically disconnected from politics.
For the first time, I'm hearing those people say,

Speaker 11 this must be a new day for Israel. This must be a rebirth.
And it's our generation now that has to play a role. So I do think in Israeli politics, everyone's focused on Bibi or not BB.

Speaker 11 It's like the way in American politics, everything's Trump or, you know, Trump anti-like everything. everything

Speaker 11 the the the arc of history bends one way or the other towards how you think about trump it's the same with netanyahu such an outsized force in israeli politics i think we focused on netanyahu as we should in our analysis at the expense of, I think, a new generation that will be rising in Israeli politics.

Speaker 11 And the role they play could be certainly unprecedented and very interesting.

Speaker 10 We'll be right back after a quick break.

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Speaker 10 We're back with more from Dan Sinor.

Speaker 10 It's so interesting.

Speaker 10 You know, I immediately go to, and I don't mean to diminish the gravity of these situations, but I immediately go to branding because marketing is my background.

Speaker 10 And brands, you know, Heineken's a fairly pedestrian beer

Speaker 10 in Holland, and it's a luxury beer in the U.S. And Budweiser is a luxury beer in the U.S.

Speaker 10 And I find that some of these historical figures, whether it's Tony Blair or Goldemeyer, are much more popular outside of their own nation.

Speaker 10 And I was struck by how many people were applauding at every mention of Trump in these celebrations in Israel yesterday and today and booing when they heard the term Netanyahu.

Speaker 10 And then I've also heard other people say that Netanyahu was literally running to stay out of jail.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I don't buy that.

Speaker 11 I mean, I'm open to

Speaker 11 a whole range of criticisms against Netanyahu, but I think this idea that,

Speaker 11 you know,

Speaker 11 there's a tendency, I think, for those of us who, you know, follow these events so closely to always find like the secret motive behind a politician's actions.

Speaker 11 So then this narrative emerged that Netanyahu has these corruption cases and that he just wants to extend the war in order to extend his government, stay in power, and the odds of him going to jail go down

Speaker 11 if he stays in government. And therefore, unfortunately for Israelis and Palestinians, the war has to go on and on in service of Netanyahu's political career.
I don't buy it for two reasons.

Speaker 11 One, these corruption cases are pretty weak. If you look closely, even Netanyahu critics who are deep into the legal aspects here, I think they're pretty weak.
A, B,

Speaker 11 even if he goes, even if he's found guilty,

Speaker 11 these legal cases have been going on forever. They will go on for a while.
Even if he's found guilty, he will likely appeal them. The idea that anyone's sending Netanyahu

Speaker 11 at that point, well into his 80s to prison, it's just not believable. I think

Speaker 11 what's so complicated, and I think you talked about this at the beginning, about like trying to compartmentalize how you think about Trump and being able to hold many views.

Speaker 11 One of disgust, which you articulated at the same time, of that you're impressed

Speaker 11 by what was accomplished here. I think it's important to understand or just keep in mind that

Speaker 11 politicians usually have many competing motives. I've worked with a lot of politicians.
I always find this. There's a sense of commitment to public service.

Speaker 11 So, genuine, good-spirited, like, I want to try and do things.

Speaker 11 You know, publicly spirited people who at the same time have their own issues about their reputations and how they'll be thought of in history and

Speaker 11 some degree of narcissism. It's all wrapped up in that, in the decision to make.
It's all wrapped up in it. And Netanyahu,

Speaker 11 his political rise, if you go back to his political rise now decades ago, basically was on the back of the heroism and tragedy of his brother, Yoni Netanyahu, the Battle of Entebbe, the Operation Entebbe.

Speaker 11 He led the Operation into Entebbe, got these Israeli hostages out, and he was the only one who was killed in the operation.

Speaker 11 And that is when the Netanyahu name became this like, like this mythical, like larger-than-life name in Israeli society.

Speaker 11 And then soon after, Benjamin Netanyahu ran for office or got involved in politics, ultimately ran for office.

Speaker 11 The idea that the bookends of his career could be

Speaker 11 the Yoni Netanyahu story at the beginning of his career, rescuing Israeli hostages, to the other bookend being the largest number of Israeli hostages taken on his watch at the end of his career.

Speaker 11 And I'm convinced, I'm not in the man's head. I speak to him him from time to time, but I'm not in his head.

Speaker 11 I'm convinced that that other bookend, he was not willing to allow that other bookend be the bookend, that he was going to get these hostages back.

Speaker 11 Now, when someone says, I'm going to get these hostages back, is it because he's publicly spirited? I believe he is.

Speaker 11 I know that's going to be hard for people to, I believe he genuinely wanted these hostages back. Is he also consider himself a custodian of his own reputation and his own career? Of course.

Speaker 11 Point to me, a politician that doesn't. And so

Speaker 11 it's like we should be able to say that politicians are complicated enough just because of those two competing factors that they're constantly twisting and twirling inside their heads.

Speaker 11 We don't have to come up with, and then there's this, and then there's this, and then sneakily trying to do that.

Speaker 11 I think we're all usually wrong about those layers and layers and layers. And these two

Speaker 11 big factors are usually the factors.

Speaker 11 Tragically, they sometimes compete with one another. But when they're synchronized, they're all both moving the same direction.
That's when I think the real magic can happen.

Speaker 11 And I think that's what has happened actually both for Netanyahu and for Trump

Speaker 11 in the closing of this deal.

Speaker 10 Let's assume that there's something resembling an enduring peace and that this conflict has come to an end.

Speaker 10 And let's take off the table that let's assume that the residents or the citizens of Gaza and Israel are winners here.

Speaker 10 Who are the other winners, and probably more interestingly, the losers with this piece?

Speaker 11 Obviously, I think Israel is a winner. I actually think the Palestinians are winners here, the Palestinian people, for the reasons I was saying earlier, which is the war ends.

Speaker 11 And at the same time that the Arab world has made clear that they're committed to rebuilding Gaza.

Speaker 11 So the war ends, and it's not like everyone's abandoning ship and bailing on the Palestinian people. So the Palestinians are winners here.

Speaker 11 I think the U.S.

Speaker 11 is a winner here because it has demonstrated that, you know, there was this image someone was describing to me today on television, a split screen of Israeli soldiers taking the hostages out of Gaza and returning them.

Speaker 11 So you see the image of these Israeli soldiers taking hostages out of Gaza at the split screen on the news at the same time that Air Force One was landing at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.

Speaker 11 And it was that split screen, which is the power of, of course, the guy in the uniform, the soldier from whatever country is fighting. There's power that comes from that.

Speaker 11 But where you get the real kind of exponential turbocharge power is when it's paired with that Air Force One, when it's paired with the power of the U.S.

Speaker 11 and the president of the United States, regardless of who the president is. And so I think it's important for us as Americans to keep in mind when

Speaker 11 we go shoulder to shoulder with allies and help them achieve their security aims,

Speaker 11 we are sending a message about American power that I think has

Speaker 11 that value that goes on in the world well beyond the individual, the moment we're focused on. That's that's so the U.S., I think, is a winner here.

Speaker 11 And I think they're world largely winners here because they get calm, they get some stability, they get, you know, the Gulf states like the Emiratis and the Bahrainis have been huge beneficiaries of the Abraham Accords.

Speaker 11 There's now a potential now for further normalization, which I think will do wonders for the growth, the modernization, the economic growth in the region. So they're winners.

Speaker 11 I think the losers, if I would pick one other bucket of losers, are most of Europe. Not all of Europe, but most of Europe.

Speaker 11 I think the European leaders like Starmer in the UK, like Macron in France, and then outside of Europe, like Kearney in Canada, I think made a huge mistake.

Speaker 11 Just when pressure was mounting on Hamas, they came in with that recognition of a Palestinian state, the UN, which basically declared that they believed that with no conditions that Hamas release hostages, with no conditions that Hamas leave Gaza, with no conditions that Hamas rearm.

Speaker 11 They sent a message that, as far as Europe was concerned in Canada, that

Speaker 11 October 7th was Palestinian Independence Day.

Speaker 11 And that was a terrible move by them. And then, even worse for them, was then Trump completely ignores them and moves his own diplomacy to make something happen.
And he does it. The U.S.
does it.

Speaker 11 The Gulf states do it. And Europe's completely cut out of it.
They're like not even involved. So they also look impotent.
Not only did they make the wrong bet, but then they looked impotent.

Speaker 11 So I would say Hamas in Europe and Canada to some degree are the losers. I think the Palestinian people, Israel, most of the Arab world, Turkey, and the U.S.
are the winners.

Speaker 10 There are a few people I know in this nation that understand the chessboard better in the Middle East than you. You've served in government.

Speaker 10 You've obviously been studying his issues and almost become sort of a go-to media figure. If someone had told you, if someone had laid out on October the 8th

Speaker 10 what just transpired,

Speaker 11 and then

Speaker 10 you had to guess what was going to happen over the next two odd years, what has surprised you most about what has happened militarily, politically, and also domestically in the U.S.

Speaker 11 Look, I continue to be floored by

Speaker 11 the I mean, I had Sam Harris on my podcast on the anniversary, the two-year anniversary of October 7th. I asked him on the first-year anniversary on the podcast.

Speaker 11 I asked him what surprised him the most. And he said just

Speaker 11 the just explosion of anti-Semitism. And then he said on year two, he's still surprised by it.
For me, I was, I, you know, I was surprised by it in year one, by year two.

Speaker 11 I guess I was still surprised, but I, but I, I kind of had become numb to it a little bit.

Speaker 11 Uh, I, I do worry, Scott, that, that many friends of mine, Jewish friends of mine are like, okay, this period is over. The hostages, the light-living hostages are back.
The war is over.

Speaker 11 We're done.

Speaker 11 And I don't think we're done because I think now we have to start really thinking about, there was almost no time to kind of deal with how prevalent and ugly and pervasive this anti-Semitism was.

Speaker 11 And now we're going to have to start dealing with it. I think you see a lot of people in the U.K.
and France and Canada, elsewhere leaving those countries, Jews, in big numbers.

Speaker 11 I think that's going to, I mean, I think we're all going to start looking around saying,

Speaker 11 what does this mean for Jewish life in the U.S.?

Speaker 11 Why couldn't something like the Manchester Synagogue attack happen at any number of Jewish institutions in the U.S.? Who's going to stand up for us? Who has our back?

Speaker 11 And so there's that, that's going to be our new day, sadly. And then the other big surprise for me is

Speaker 11 taking out Iran. I can't, I couldn't be more emphatic about

Speaker 11 what, if you would have told me, if you would have, forget about my surprise, if you'd have told Sinoir on October 6th, right, that, that or give him your scenario on october 8th hey you've just launched this attack and in the next two years let me tell you what it's going to look like hezbollah your your sister terror organization in in in israel's northern border gone their whole rocket arsenal gone the assad regime in power for over five decades gone

Speaker 11 uh

Speaker 11 iran's nuclear capability which was emerging to pose an existential threat to Israel, gone.

Speaker 11 I mean, if you just go one after the other, you would have never believed it, right? I think Iran was the linchpin.

Speaker 11 Israel, if you think about Israel's decision to go after Hezbollah, which removed the biggest check on Israel going after Iran, that was Israel was always, Israeli planners were always concerned about going after Iran because of the risk of Iran lighting up Hezbollah on its northern border.

Speaker 11 With Hezbollah gone, it created a path for Israel to go against Iran. And then Israel going against Iran and doing it,

Speaker 11 executing it masterfully, then created space for the U.S. to come in.

Speaker 11 And then this policy issue that many of us have been perplexed by for decades, two decades really,

Speaker 11 the possibility of Iran going nuclear. There are four major countries that are a major threat to the United States.
Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Three of the four have nuclear weapons.

Speaker 11 Iran was the only one that didn't. And you could not imagine, any of us could not,

Speaker 11 I could not imagine a path in which Iran was going to be stopped short of military action. You just couldn't.
All this diplomacy was not going to work.

Speaker 11 Iran, suddenly being enlightened, was not going to happen. Iran was marching towards a nuclear weapons capability.
And

Speaker 11 if I would have, I couldn't imagine that after this terror attack by Hamas, the net out would be that within two years, Iran would be the first country whose nuclear ambitions would have been reversed of the major powers

Speaker 11 arrayed against the U.S. and the West and Israel as a result of all of this by military force, by the U.S.
and Israel.

Speaker 11 I'm still kind of shocked by it. It has transformed the region.

Speaker 10 I want to pivot to a more optimistic tone or talk about what I see as some points of light here. And I think you'll agree.
You wrote a book called Startup Nation about, I mean, essentially

Speaker 10 zero to one, if you were loosely to say countries that have really excelled fast in terms of GDP growth, it's usually been a function of technology or finance or both. And Israel is out in spades.

Speaker 10 And also war, nothing creates innovation like the existential threat of your society going out of existence, whether it's World War I and tanks and aircraft or World War II, you know, jet transportation, radar, splitting the atom.

Speaker 10 Cold War gave rise to the internet, DARPA, and GPS.

Speaker 10 We see in Ukraine,

Speaker 10 there's real hope that that economy economy someday might be rebuilt with the prosperity of the drone technology.

Speaker 10 Ukraine, assuming we have a sovereign Ukraine, will likely be an incredible hub for asymmetric warfare and all sorts of consumer applications around drone technology. You study Israel.

Speaker 10 You know the economy well there. Pivoting to what type of innovation

Speaker 10 is going to come out of this war. I think I hate to call it an innovation, but I never thought of tunnels as being a huge innovation in warfare, and it played a key role here.

Speaker 10 What innovation do you see or what technologies do you think played a key role here in terms of the IDF and Israel that might give us a glimpse into future technologies?

Speaker 11 Yeah, I think there are two laboratories, as you're alluding to.

Speaker 11 There are two laboratories today that are the future, you know, where we can study the future of warfare, and that's Ukraine and Israel.

Speaker 11 While Ukraine has some of this, Israel has it at a whole other, almost like industrial scale. It has this incredible tech ecosystem

Speaker 11 that

Speaker 11 has been called to fight.

Speaker 11 So, I know plenty of Israeli tech entrepreneurs and people who work at biggest raily tech companies or big multinational tech companies with operations in Israel that have been called up to fight.

Speaker 11 And they come back from fighting in Gaza and they say, I want to. I want to work on the defense of my country right now.

Speaker 11 And so, the number of defense tech, the sector, the defense tech sector, so before October 7th, there were about 160 defense tech startups in Israel.

Speaker 11 Now, that number is close to 400 in a a matter of two years.

Speaker 11 It's a booming, no pun intended, sector. And it all deals, as you said, with drone warfare, with counter-drone warfare, with

Speaker 11 AI, you know, is obviously

Speaker 11 embedded in all of this. And

Speaker 11 I think we are experiencing and observing a surge in defense spending globally, especially in the U.S. and Europe.

Speaker 11 And all these countries that talked about cutting off arms to Israel, arms sales to Israel, doing business with Israel, buying arms from Israel. I think all that's going to fall by the wayside.

Speaker 11 I think these governments have a lot of money to spend on defense. They're studying what Israel has learned

Speaker 11 in its two-year war, and they are going to be dazzled, as I know you have, I have, others have, by

Speaker 11 the these Israeli innovators.

Speaker 11 And the combination of this incredible technical expertise, combined with having gone through crucible leadership experiences, serving in war, leading men into battle, the crucible leadership experience that these people have, which gives them a huge advantage in building companies.

Speaker 11 And now, this understanding of where warfare is going. There are many areas I can talk about in the Israeli tech sector that

Speaker 11 are, you know, caused for

Speaker 11 optimism or bullishness.

Speaker 11 I think the defense sector is going to make the cyber sector, which was Israel was outside of the U.S., Israel was the biggest cyber sector, cyber sector, cybersecurity startups in the world.

Speaker 11 I think it's going, what we're about to see in defense tech is going to eclipse cybersecurity. The future of warfighting with technology is

Speaker 11 Israel is going to be the hub.

Speaker 10 You know, the podcast, Two Jews in the News, I think it's called? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 Unholy. Yeah.
Oh, I'm sorry, Unholy. Yeah, two Jews in the News.

Speaker 10 They invited me, I'm not sure why, on the podcast before October the 7th and asked me a bunch of questions about life in America and anti-Semitism. And I said, well, anti-Semitism is a light sleeper.

Speaker 10 I don't really feel it in the U.S.

Speaker 10 I don't feel it in corporate America. If you asked me if it's there, I would say no.
I don't notice it.

Speaker 10 I listen to that podcast now and I cringe at just how fucking stupid I was around how naive and ignorant I was. I mean, you know, that adage that two-thirds of an iceberg's mass is below the surface.

Speaker 10 This felt like 99.9% of anti-Semitism in the U.S. was underneath the surface.
At least I didn't see it. I have been absolutely flummoxed.
And this is my pivot to something optimistic.

Speaker 10 You and I know each other fairly well now. I know what a huge role faith plays in your life.
It plays almost no role in my life, my Judaism. I don't feel any real connection to the religion.

Speaker 10 Since the seventh, I have become a proud Zionist. It is totally illuminated for selfish reasons.

Speaker 10 I tell my sons, who I have not brought up in any sort of religious indoctrination, that, look, it's a dangerous world.

Speaker 10 At some point, you want to make sure you can go to a prosperous, safe place for Jews, and that's Israel. So you have a vested interest in the survival of Israel and Zionism.

Speaker 10 And then people come online and comments, as they will in this podcast, and they accuse me of being a Zionist as if it's a bad thing.

Speaker 11 I'm like, 100%,

Speaker 10 spot on, guilty as charged.

Speaker 10 And my moment of hope here is that I think there are a lot of people like me who are ignorant to the threats against the Jewish people in Israel and now feel activated. And just like my

Speaker 10 friend or someone I admire a great deal, Dan Harris, at the 10% Happer podcast, I feel like I'm 110% more,

Speaker 10 I'll say a Jewish, 150% more Zionist. And I'd like to think that a lot of people

Speaker 10 feel that way now, that we don't take our background, we don't take the importance of speaking out, we don't take the

Speaker 10 demands that we devote resources, attention, and speak out, that it has really activated a lot of people, including myself, who quite frankly were indifferent and on the sidelines.

Speaker 10 Do you see hope in that? Have you seen evidence of that?

Speaker 11 Totally. I've seen huge, huge, it's what we call October 8th Jews, you know, Jews who after October 7th weren't engaged in their Judaism, and then October 8th, they're like lit up.

Speaker 11 What I don't want it to be

Speaker 11 is all channeled towards fighting with Israel's and the Jewish people's enemies. Obviously, fighting with Israel's enemies and the Jewish people's enemies is important, but it can't be the way we,

Speaker 11 the enrichment in my life that I've gotten from leading a Jewish life is not from fighting anti-Semitism.

Speaker 11 Obviously, it's part fighting anti-Semitism is a condition of the Jewish people going back thousands of years, but every century, really. But it can't be our sole

Speaker 11 existence because the truth is, it's unpleasant.

Speaker 11 Like, you see, you don't want to, like my kids, if I just, if they just, if I just sit around every night telling them about the anti-Semite they've got to fight with, they're going to be like, geez, dad, this is,

Speaker 11 I mean, I guess I should do it, but it's pretty, it's a pretty unattractive way to live my life.

Speaker 11 What they have benefited from, what I've benefited from, is the joy of Jewish holidays, the joys and enrichment and stimulation from Jewish learning and debates and Jewish literacy and understanding Jewish history and the sense of community one feels when they're when they're part of a Jewish community.

Speaker 11 The rituals, you know, there's so many rituals we we live with. You know, my family, every Friday night, we do a Shabbat dinner.
My children love it. My wife and I love it.

Speaker 11 We have people from the community come for Shabbat dinners or we go to other people's homes.

Speaker 11 It's like a resetting every week on the Sabbath of family interconnectedness, not with devices, not with, you know, parties and social events, but with togetherness, human interaction,

Speaker 11 reflecting on. the week, reflecting on time.

Speaker 11 I think those, I mean, I can go on and on about this.

Speaker 11 Those are the things that I hope those who are October 8th Jews don't suddenly become, you know, what date is it, October 13th, don't send suddenly that October 8th Judaism doesn't end on October 13th, 2025.

Speaker 11 I hope that it's a launching pad for living Jewishly in ways that aren't just about fighting with our enemies. Because fighting with your enemies is no way to live a life.

Speaker 10 Dan Sienor is a leading expert on Israel in the Middle East. He's the co-author of The Genius of Israel and Startup Nation.
He's also the host of the Call Me Back podcast.

Speaker 10 Dan, a lot of young men listen to this podcast. I think you're a fantastic role model for young men because you have taken and tackled and really

Speaker 10 jumped into the deep end of the most polarizing, emotional, and partisan issue, and you handle it with grace. I listen to all your podcasts.
You don't interrupt people. You don't insult them.

Speaker 10 I think you're a fantastic role model, not only for young men, but for the media in general, to just demonstrate the kind of grace and rigor that

Speaker 10 you demonstrate. You've really been

Speaker 10 a point of calm and a lighthouse in this storm. Very much appreciate you and your good work here.
Thanks very much, Dan.

Speaker 11 Let's just say I learned from the best. Thank you.

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