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- [00:00]
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FOREIGN.
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Welcome to a very special episode of Ask Khabib Anything. I have with me here today Tal Shoham, whose wife Adi is the sister of Shaker Haran, who has been on this podcast. Before Tal, most of Tal's family was taken hostage on October 7. Tal himself spent 505 days separated from the wife and the children, starved, beaten, kept in the dark and emerging from the tunnels with a story of dignity, of how Hamas functions in those tunnels, what this organization and these people have been able to do to remain alive during the war and prevent the Israeli war effort from pulling them out of those tunnels. And we're going to end with Tal's own story with some very, very thoughtful remarks that he's made in the past about hatred in this conflict and the future of the conflict. So stay with me. I want to say just for a minute, very quickly. This episode is sponsored by my friend Elisa Wald. And thank you, Elisa, for sponsoring this episode and also because I really want to plug your effort, which is an amazing, amazing book club that Elisa is a writer who noticed after October 7th that American Jews were being marginalized, even ostracized within the American publishing world. It's a very, very well known secret that Jewish authors are actually having trouble getting published, certainly if they don't toe the political line. But even when they do, in order to mount a fierce broadside against this trend driven by the politics of the publishing world, she started the Never Alone Book Club with the goal of sending Jewish writers to the New York Times bestseller list every single. It has become the biggest Jewish book club in the country. I myself am a member. I have bought several books recommended by the book club. But more members are needed to join to create a continuous series of Jewish bestsellers. These are great books. Dara Horne, Sarah Hurwitz, Nellie Bowles. These are just some of the authors that have come to be interviewed at the book club and also whose books are being sold through the book club. Let's make a continuous series of Jewish bestsellers. Of bestsellers telling the Jewish story from a Jew perspective. Rabbi Angela Buchdal is going to come in the near future. I recently met Rabbi Buchdal when I spoke at her synagogue in New York. Remarkable leader and thoughtful person. There are always very smart and fascinating conversations about important Jewish books happening there. So join them. Obviously there's going to be a link in the show notes and thanks, Elisa, for everything you do. I would also like to invite everyone to join our Patreon if you're interested in asking questions that guide the Topics we choose to talk about Join us we discussions we share amazing resources and we have a monthly live stream where I answer all your questions live. That's at patreon.com asklavib anything the link will be in the show. Notes Tal how are you?
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Much better now. I mean we had quite amazing few weeks. Now all the living hostages came back, including Guy Gilbert, Alal and Igatar David, which for me, they are my new brothers in life. We spend most of my time in captivity together and I'm so happy and pleased that they are back home now. I feel such a big weight that was released from my shoulders and chest and I can breathe normally now and start to look to gaze into the future now. And it's remarkable time now for me.
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B
I think everybody in this country has felt a kind of release of that knot, but nobody more so than Eli Sharabi, who came on the podcast and talked about a similar feeling with Alon Oil. People who you survive the tunnels with tell us something about that, about that friendship specifically with them, but also what that means. What is it to be in a place like that, of despair? I can only imagine I can't do more than that. And how does coming out together? Have you met? I mean, you've obviously met. We've seen pictures even. But what is that conversation like now that you're all free?
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A
I experienced the release eight months before then. I know how overwhelming everything is when you get out of this small underground tomb into the big world again. Everything is trying to enter inside. It's like life is trying to catch up with you and it's really, really overwhelming. So the conversations are really slow. I'm giving them the time. I'm not asking too much about what they experienced after I went or other experience that they had and thoughts and so on. And I know that now we have time. You know, in, in the tunnel, they used to, they were the, the terrorists were obsessed that we won't know the time and date. And they used to tell us in the tunnel, fishwacket, there is no time here. And when I, when I was released, I, I told myself, now there is time. Elchin fiwaket in Arabic. And this is how I'm living my life now. There is time now for everything. And we can take it step by step, slowly. We don't need to rush to anywhere. And I hope that I'm doing the same service to Guy and the rest of the hostages that I'm in contact with, because they need their time now. They need to Take it slowly to grasp everything that is happening now, let alone what happened to them. And I think that it will be really hard for people that didn't experience such an event or such an experience to grasp how deep this overwhelming feeling is.
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B
You were visiting Kibbutz Beri for the holiday and take us to that day. You're there with your son, your daughter, your wife, many of the extended families, Grandpa Avshal and grandma and an aunt and a cousin. When do you understand what's happening?
- [07:15]
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On October 7th. Everything went so fast and without any sense of logic into it. So it's really surrealist and not comprehendable. I think the word is, it was like looking on a video or a TV show from outside and witnessing what is going on without actually participating in it. In a sense, I could not think about anything except what is the next move we must do or need to do. And the fact that there is a brigade inside the kibbutz, brigade of terrorists inside. I could not understand it could not make any sense of what is going on. We were lucky that we did the right thing in the safe room and they decided to kidnap us and not murder us like all the rest of the neighborhood. Unfortunately, we lost Afshal and my father in law, which him, they. They decided, I don't know why to. To execute him in the kibbutz and not to take him with them to Gaza.
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B
Can I zero in on that? The entire street was murdered that day. That street, the whole street in Kibbutz Bailey. I've been in that street. Houses burned down. Yeah. You convince them. There was a conversation in which you convinced them to kidnap rather than kill. How did that happen? How did that go down?
- [09:18]
A
So it's really hard to tell because I visit afterwards, after I came back, I visit in the kibbutz and you know that I saw pictures and videos from exact. For example, from the United States where there is a tornado that it's taking the whole neighborhood, but only one house is left standing. And I cannot understand why it happened like that. But all around us they murdered everyone, including children and women. And somehow, as you say, the conversation, which was only few seconds of looking them in the eye, signaling them that we are surrendering to their hands and emphasize on the fact that there are children and women in the room. Somehow it got to them and they decided to kidnap us and not murdering us. And it's really hard to grasp how can it be that all the other neighborhood neighbors around us were murdered. And again including little children the age of my children. And it's such. I mean, the cruelty and evil that they unleashed on the kibbutz that day, it's unimaginable. And the logic behind it seems to not exist. And I'm really, until this day, I cannot actually confirm or understand. How can it be that they decided to kidnap us and not others as.
- [11:15]
B
Well we know they had orders to kidnap and they were rampaging and murdering their way. And maybe at some point they noticed they hadn't yet taken hostages that particular cell of Hamas fighters. So they are, they, they take you, you are separated from your family as soon as you leave the house and you're taken to Gaza in the trunk of a car along with Alon Ghat, his wife Yilden, their toddler. Alon succeeds in escaping with the, with, with his daughter in his arms. And then at some point, the terrorists who have you decide again to kill you. There's another moment where they make this decision and again you talk them out of it. And that it was a. Yeah, it was all, it was a touch and go kind of. What? Yeah, tell us about that.
- [12:09]
A
On the way to Gaza, I was held in the, in the trunk of the car and, and I made a stance regarding my life. I say to myself, okay, you, you work, were kidnapped, they didn't kill you, and you probably gonna be like the latch elite. Five, six years in captivity. And then I decided that no matter how they will treat me and where I will be and for how long, I will demand from them a human standard, I won't let them take me to a subhuman level. I believe that human life matters in the spiritual and in God given way and humans should act and live above the human standard in comparison to animals and other life forms. And I decided this decision and it had. While we are on the way to Gaza, it had like practical thoughts with it. So I decided that if they will try to execute me like ISIS do, to cut my head off, I will struggle and try to run. So they would shoot me in the back and not take my head off, which is much more humane way to die. And it's probably. It can sound really bizarre to your audience, but this is what I thought on the move. And when we entered Gaza, they took me out of the car and the terrorist that pulled me from the safe room from our house, he jumped on the roof of the car and he looked me in the eye, point his Kalachnikov on me and told me to go to my knees. And I could see, I looked into his eye and I could see the murder intention in it or coming out of it. So again I raised my hands in surrender and I shout back that I surrendered. I won't go to my knees, and he should not kill me. And we argued like that for half a minute or a little bit more, until the other terrorists just took me in the shoulders, turned me around, and we started to walk in the street of Gaza.
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B
You walked through the streets of Gaza and Gazans saw you, children saw you. What was that like? You also, you mentioned at one point you waved to them, you tried to smile at them. What, what was that experience? What did they, for example, how did they react to you?
- [15:14]
A
So we walked for, I don't know, a few minutes in, in the street, and then came a, A, a motorbike driver. And he, like, he like, blocked our way. I, afterwards, I, I discovered he is. And he was a police officer in Hamas regime. And he and my capture, they spoke for a few. They spoke a little bit and then decided to put me on the bike and start a parade drive in the main streets of Gaza. So they drove from street to street, shouting. We caught a Jewish soldier pig. And everyone was cheering and happy and shouting. And there were a group of young Ferristians that tried to beat me. They came with sticks or with the fists, but I was lucky enough that the driver didn't stay enough time in every location, so they didn't manage to catch me. Now I decided that I won't show any fear. So I looked them in the eye. I treated it like a tribe in Tel Aviv. And in one point, they pointed on me in a cynical manner or something like that, and I just waved to them. I told them good morning. And, and I treated it like, like, like it's a normal thing to be there. Although of course it's. It's really not.
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B
You spent the next, first, the first month, the next month in captivity without knowing if your family was alive or dead?
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Yeah.
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B
And you talked about the first 50 days and you talked about imagining their funerals.
- [17:20]
A
The first moment they took me into a heating house or a safe house that I was held in. I decided that now that I'm 100% in the terrorist control, I need to do everything in my power to live and protect my inner life from what is going on outside. And in, in my solitary condition, I was alone. And the only thing I had is. It was my own life. And I got deeper and deeper inside it, living with the different voices and nature of, of lives that we have. And the thought about my family did not give me rest. At all. I could not make any logic or coherentic logic that I can believe in regarding their fate. If they were released in the kibbutz, if they were kidnapped or murdered. And it became like an obsessive compulsive thoughts every morning, every afternoon, every day and night. I used to lie on my bed in the evenings and try to imagine what will happen if I will come back and I will discover that only one of them is alive. Like only my son Naveh is survived, or only Yael, my daughter. Or the worst case, only Hadith survived. Or what will happen if they all survived and I didn't, and so on. And in one of those cases, I decided that to be free in myself, I need to accept their death as I accept mine. And I decided to do a funeral to them, to really try to live the experience of being in the graveyard, standing in front of big grave, one big grave and two small ones, with all of my community, our community around us. And I give a eulogy, a full page to every one of them. I told them that I'm sorry about what happened, that I love them, that I'm releasing them or freeing them to their next life endeavor. And I really tried to live it, to live the moment. And it was really, really tough. I think it's the most difficult and tough thing I did in my life until then.
- [20:36]
B
Where did that wisdom come from? That understanding that protecting your inner life was the task of that moment, not falling apart in that way, building those barriers, letting go so that you wouldn't be pulled down by the hope, the anxiety, the fear. Where did that wisdom come from?
- [20:57]
A
So I was already 38 years old when I was kidnapped. And I had 23 years of spiritual journey when it happened. And I was fortunate enough to have the tools and experience to discover what works and what doesn't. I was fortunate enough to know tools and to experience the way of things and to discover what is working and what doesn't work in captivity. And it's like a grinding of experience. You try something and you discover that it don't work, it doesn't work. And then you try another thing and you start to feel what will work and what not, because you know you don't have anything around you. You don't have cell phone, a tv. All the impressions that we are used to are not there. So the feelings start to be really, really acute. And. And then I started more and more to, to. To discover how to surrender into this. A, an ability to, To. To control my life. You can say it's it's actually to surrender to, to, to this reality. And then I could start to feel the, the say, the liberty of, of, of, of being free from a, that controlling our life. I, I think I, I, I, I jumped too fast, too deep, I think, into, into this conversation. But it's a really, really.
- [22:52]
B
Eli described something similar. Yeah, and, and, and this was a hostage. I, I forget who it was, but because they didn't do it on my podcast, they interviewed just some newspaper, but they said, you know, first you talk to the people around you, and then they moved you to someplace alone, and then you talked to the Hamas captor captors, and then they put you in a, in a dark room, and then you talk to the dark, and in the dark you find God talking back. And that's kind of this progression where there's always a way to, to find, to find that resilience, to find that. It's such a, I think it maybe, I don't know, I'm, I'm learning from it about this, these human capabilities. Do you feel you come away from it stronger? Is that unnecessarily an optimistic take on what is essentially just an absolutely terrible experience in every way.
- [23:51]
A
Any experience that they have that didn't kill me will make me stronger. And this is how I lived my life before, and this is how I'm living it now. So I can say that I'm not happy that I was kidnapped, but it was quite spiritual, and it was quite spiritual journey for me, and I feel that I'm much, much stronger now than I was before.
- [24:30]
B
You described being moved to tunnels, dark spaces. You spent over 200 days in one particular tunnel of, I think in 120ft of tunnel, just this tiny, tiny area. And the starvation, the deprivation, the, the captors saying they're sending you a message as they mock you. The, the need of the captors to go through these rituals of power. For example, the ritual at the very beginning where he was planning to shoot you while you're on your knees. That need that, that captor had to feel powerful and capable of killing you. Can you paint us that picture? Can you tell us what did it smell like? What did it sound like? What is that fear like? What are those physical conditions like? I'm asking you to go back in there. I only dare to ask because you have talked about this, and so obviously, if you don't want to, we'll cut the question. But what, what is it like to be in a tunnel? We've just been feeling and thinking and worrying about 251 hostages for 700 something days. What did, what did you go through?
- [25:40]
A
Yeah, so, so first I would say that, that I want to speak about those things because I think that it's important that people will know how Hamas is working and how he's acting and to show the world Hamas true face that it's not behind the well spent media campaigns that they are doing with all the anti Semitism around it or that is going hand with hand with it. So I want to speak openly about those experience inside the tunnel. Although as you said it's not a pleasant journey back to them into the tunnel. I can say that the first weeks in the tunnel my body and complex my, my mind was in total shock. It's a really, really narrow tunnel, only 1 meter wide or I think it's, it's 30 inch or so. Yeah, something like that. 1.8 meter high and, and 12 meter long. We, we had four mattresses on the floor. We were four hostages. A little bit sand space between the mattress and a hole in the ground served as a toilet. We were prevented from oxygen. The tunnel was blocked from both sides. One side a wall and the other side there were an iron door. So there were no circulation of air and it was really hard to breathe in the tunnel. The humidity was really, really high. Our clothes were perpetually wet. After two or three days they became perpetually wet and nothing gets dry in the tunnel. We received a shower Only once every 21 day in average sometimes even more than a month. So we didn't change clothes. We were dirty all the time and just needed to accept this reality. And most of the time we received really little amount of food in, in the average of 500 calories per person which is a quarter of. Of what or even a fifth of what adult need to just have basic like regular day. Yeah. Without exercise, without anything else. So it was a deep and extreme starvation that went on most of the time to the extent that Evia Tar and me, we developed scarvy which is unheard of in the western world or even in the whole world. It's extreme vitamin C deficiency where the body start to eat itself and it's, it's just because we didn't receive any nutrition value food in, in those days. In all of this period of time as you said or started described that the, the guards were bullying us all the time. And somehow I don't know why, but it seems that we received the worst guards that could be. They tried to bully us. Every time that we met one of Them used to come and if he decided to spend few minutes with us and not just throwing the food and water on us and leaving and leave the tunnel, he would come and start to scream on us and leave us like bizarre orders which he compelled us to do. And he watched in the camera. They installed the camera in the tunnel so they can observe us. He used to threat that they will bring us even less food that they brought, or he will bring his bodies and they will beat the shit out of us for the rest of our activity, which would be 10 years, 5 years and. And so on. Another guard used to come a few times and he used to come with, with like a, an angry, a look in his eyes and to tell us that one of us need to die and, and we will choose who it will be and we will argue with him that, that he should not kill us, we didn't do anything wrong, we are compliant and he should not do it. And then he will nod and think to himself and say, okay, so today I will spare you, spare your life, but next time you will need to decide. Or he turned the fire outside of the tunnel and he directed the smoke into the tunnel and we almost suffocated to death. And you know, I can keep going, keep telling you evil actions and cruel actions that those terrorists did, but I don't know if you want to go more into it because we have so much time in the tunnel and they go out of their character to find ways to torture us and to make us suffer, including, as you said, intentional starvation because they had food all the time. They stole. They used to brag upon the fact that they stole the humanitarian aid that came into Gaza. Forced evidence. They stole it and they piled it in their tunnel or their rooms underground. Tal.
- [32:59]
B
Did you ever meet a Gazan that wasn't cheering your kidnapping, supporting Hamas, proud of your torture? Or wasn't Hamas themselves? Now, you didn't live in Gazan society during this period, but you came out and have said and have talked about the suffering of Gazans. Did you ever meet Gazans who did not want you dead? Do you come out with that kind of experience at the hands of Hamas? I am radicalized by your experience. I am willing to have every last member of Hamas dead, and I am willing to fight a war to get that done. I genuinely don't understand how you came out of there with feelings of real sympathy toward. Toward Gazans.
- [33:49]
A
Yeah. So first I would say that life is complex and it's not black and white and there is much more gray Area and shapes in it. I didn't met in Gaza. I didn't met like not Hamas members or civilians. But what I notice is that all of them grew up on hatred to Jews and hatred to Israelis. It's part of their education system.
- [34:24]
B
Excuse me, forgive me, Let me interject for a moment. You, you were 200 days in that, in that tunnel, but you were 300 days not in that tunnel. And you were actually held in houses, in homes, including very educated Gazans. Teachers, doctors, all of them supported Hamas. Now that's a selective group Hamas would have placed a hostage with. So again, they're not representative by definition, except that every time you were in the streets, that was the experience.
- [34:53]
A
Yeah. I would first say about what you just mentioned that this is part of the confusion in our culture in the west regarding this terror organization. You're speaking about doctors and teachers and constructors, managers. They're supporting Hamas, but they are not supporting Hamas. They are part of Hamas. Hamas, it's a voluntary organization which they go to work, they teach in schools, they teach in the university. Part of them are psychologists and working in all the fields. And then they go to fight for the jihad, for their religious war against Jews and Israelis. So it's not that I met people that supporting Hamas, they are actually the terrorists themselves, but they have like a day occupation and a night occupation, which is different. And this is why you see that there are paramedics and medical team members that are, that are getting killed. Most of them are Hamas terrorists under disguise because they have their day job, which is. It's a doctor or paramedic or teacher or a UNRA member or a media person and so on. And it's not that all of them are, but most of them, they are having this dual occupation. And I think that all of the Gazians are growing up on hatred. It's not selective. They cannot choose otherwise. I mean, the children cannot choose. This is what they grow up on. This is what their parents are telling them in their home. And this is what they get from schools. And it's well documented also. I mean, it's not only in Gaza, also in the West Bank. And because of this fact, I got to the conclusion that there is no real possibility of peace, not in this generation anywhere anyway, because they are not inclined to it. They actually cherish death and not living like us. They don't care. I mean, we went out of Gaza in 2005. They had 20 years to build Gaza in their own way, in their own portrait, if you can say it like that. And they decided to build this underground, a militarized structure, I mean wide. And these tunnels are so big, so wide. I mean, they stretching from north to south. And they decided to militarize Gaza instead of making it a beautiful resort.
- [38:16]
B
And you saw the building more tunnels while you sat there.
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A
They didn't stop digging tunnels for the whole of this war.
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B
Literally in front of you, literally, the tunnel you were in, the teams guarding you went off to dig tunnels and come back.
- [38:31]
A
Yeah, I didn't saw them digging, but I heard, I mean, they were using heavy machinery and we actually used this machinery to calculate time because as I said, they didn't want us to know what is the time. But they used to work until midnight and then from 6am in the morning. So they didn't stop digging tunnel for one day in all of this time when we were in Gaza. So to conclude it, I really don't think that there is any chance for a real ceasefire or peace agreement with them. But I also think that in the end, children are innocent. They are not evil. They didn't decide for themselves yet. And the children in Gaza are held hostage by Hamas in Gaza and by the Fatah in the West Bank. And they make sure these evil people make sure that those children will grow up on hatred and on the values of jihad and death, and they will go in their path. And this is a sad thought for me. I mean, I really think that children everywhere are godly and need to be protected and need to be taken care of in the most, in the most protective and good way that we can. And unfortunately their path is like locked to death and misery. And it's really unfortunate.
- [40:35]
B
You came out in the February ceasefire. Walk us through that. What did that feel like? You came out of tunnels that day?
- [40:48]
A
Well, it's really hard to describe how amazing and wonderful the experiences of being in a tomb underground for such a long time and then coming out to the fresh air and the coldness of the February winter and to suddenly see the sky again, which I didn't solve. Also above ground, because we were held in houses that the windows were closed. They were afraid that the neighbor would see us or the IDF would see us and so on. I have such a gratitude for the fact that I was released and I could reunite with my family. It's not a simple process because we all been in Gaza. We were all held captive by Hamas, my wife and my children. The capture didn't torture them, but they did experience the aggression from the people. And they were a few times Close were close to death in this conflict. And afterwards they knew where I am and the threat for my life. And then I came back and reunited, which was really happy and beautiful moments. But afterwards, when the dust has settled and there is the struggle of getting back to life and to go through everything that they went through and I went through. And it's still an ongoing process.
- [42:55]
B
How do you rebuild family life? First of all, how are Naveh and Yahel? How. How is it the. How do you rebuild that family life? Normalcy, privacy. People want to interview you, I want to interview you, but also you want to talk. And also you want that private family life as well. How do you manage that?
- [43:18]
A
So. So we are still on the go. I don't know to tell you, like the exact answer for that. I can say that first I would say that our children are amazing. They are beautiful children. And Hadi succeeded in keeping them safe and secure in hell. And they managed to keep their innocence and childhood intact. And they are actually, they are prospering now in our village. They are both in the school and Yula Yehel is in the kindergarten and they are doing really, really well now. It is a process that Adi went through in a really brave and amazing way. And then I came back to it and you know, even to make them feel not only secure, but to trust the world again, it needed time and to go slowly, like step by step, to make them believe again in humanity and to be able to trust that the world will be a better place or will be a good place. And I think that we succeeded in that.
- [44:59]
B
Can I. I'm sorry. How do you convince a kid the world is safe? We once had a break in and it took one of my four kids months before they could be in a room alone. Just that sense of violation. And it was literally just somebody wanting to rob the place. How do you from. How do you. How do kids. Neve was 11.
- [45:22]
A
Was 8, right. The cousin was 11, was 3. Yeah.
- [45:28]
B
So the 3 year old maybe can forget. The 8 year old knows everything happening to him.
- [45:32]
A
Yeah.
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B
How do you walk that journey back to a feeling of real safety?
- [45:37]
A
Both of them are. Both of them remember everything. So they didn't forget nothing. But I think that the first thing that they did and we are doing now is to separate between the bad people and the good people. So for example, the terrorists that took us from the safe room, we described them, those terrorists to the children as good terrorists that try to protect us from getting murdered. So they actually took us into Gaza to prevent our Death. And although it's not true, it's something that, that the children can grasp and to start to distinguish between the evil people that unleashed evil on the kibbutz and the other terrorists that were guarding them and protecting them from getting hurt or from dying in Gaza and before that, and then now where we. In our home, we keep telling them that we are protected from those bad people in Gaza or in other places. They cannot reach us if there is a missile attack from Iran, for example. So we are protected in the safe room or in the shelter, and we are trying to make their environment protected and feeling protected so they can start having a more normal life in it. So we say to them, look, we want you to be free to go everywhere, to ride your bicycle to the school or to friends and to go around, I don't know, to play soccer and so on. And, and also with, with Yahel, the same, the same story, whatever she likes. And so, so there is no. Like, we are like, there is no taboo in, in. In Horror House. We will speak on everything and everything that they will, they will rise. We will address in. In a way that they can understand. They don't need to know everything and everything that happened and the extent of evil that exists in the world. But, but we cannot, like, turn around to the, to the fact that they experience the cruelty and inhumane side of life. And we will address it and give them the feeling of protection and safety again. And then they can start to rise to their childhood again and to feel like free and children again.
- [49:01]
B
My last question, taking it from the resilience of children to the macro. The country went through two years of extraordinary difficulty. The war with Iran, Hezbollah. Many, many, many Israelis have either sent members of their family into the army for 100 days, 200 days, or actually lost friends in. In the war in Gaza. In the war in Gaza for most Israelis was about freeing the hostages and about. About protecting. There's a deep, deep break on October 7th in the Israeli psyche, because every Israeli I know, every neighbor of mine, every friend of mine feels that on October 7th, we betrayed you. We betrayed your family. We betrayed all of the people who the country failed to protect. And it's visceral and it's personal. All it means to be Israeli is to stand shoulder to shoulder and protect each other. That is the founding ethos and purpose of Israel, and we betrayed that. Do you think Israel can find its footing again? It has racked up extraordinary achievements in the last two years. It has shattered the Iranian proxy system. It's A safer country. On paper it's a safer country, I think in reality, but it still feels torn and it's still, the politics are still radicalized and polarized. The, the sense that something that there isn't real leadership and a shared ethos, the sense of betrayal. These are things that people feel and talk about all the time. Do you think we can find as a country a path back to a sense of solidarity and safety and quiet? You just said Gazans are not changing anytime soon. The hatred of Israel, the enemies who prepare and are willing to destroy their own economies on the war with Israel, their own polities. And I don't just mean Hamas, I mean the Iranian regime. They're not going away. How do we find our resilience and our strength and our calm and our safety again?
- [51:29]
A
So first, if we will do zoom out from Israel, you can see that this struggle is something that is worldwide. I mean politics in Europe, in the United States, in other Western cultures and in the Middle east, of course, it's all breaking apart. Society in its roots is breaking apart. It seems that there is no civil conversation anymore between people and Israel. It's not, it's not separated from, from this wave or changes in the world. Now I think that one of, of our uniqueness in, in our DNA, you can say that, that in, in emergency we, we reunite and put aside all the differences between us. And as you described, I came out from the tunnels and discovered that Israel achieved amazing achievements in those two years. The military of course, in the, in the, in the conflict with Hamas, with Hezbollah, with Iran, in not disagreements, but the Abraham Accords agreements of modern, how you say it, starting to have some relationship with Arabic countries that we didn't have before. The economic situation in Israel, it's much better than it was before, I think, or at least it wasn't affected as bad as people thought it should or will. And personally I feel really optimistic for the future and what the future can bring. But I think that there will be testing times and we as a nation, we will be tested. And if we won't understand the craze to keep this unity between us and to find ways to bridge on these agreements, it will be much harder to survive the future again as a country and in all of the changes that are going on in the world. But I feel that we have the ability to do so and in part people can actually start to see it, but there is a way to go through it. So it won't be easy. I think, I don't think that we will have quiet time or easy life as we all the time praying for, I don't know, for 2,000 years. We just want a quiet life in a small piece of land. And it seemed that it's not our destiny. And I don't think that it would change now.
- [55:30]
B
So, yeah, you went in an optimist. Did you come out an optimist?
- [55:34]
A
Yeah, much more actually.
- [55:38]
B
Dan Chieftain is a scholar of national security issues. He said there's a difference between a smart optimist and a dumb optimist. A dumb optimist thinks everything's going to be great. A smart optimist thinks we will get stronger faster than things get worse. That's kind of what I heard you say we are stronger.
- [56:01]
A
There was time that we were in the tunnel and I described to Guy A. Beatar in honor of Entiat. We were, all of us in the tunnel and I described to them all the geopolitics changes in the world and where it will go to and what will happen to the western cultures and regarding the Middle east and the east with China and everything. And. And they looked on me like they are in a funeral. They took it really hard and they say to me, so what the point to leave it? And I looked on them and I asked them, didn't you heard anything that I said? I mean, yeah, there will be hard times, but it's going to a better place and we just need to go through it. And this is, I think what, what you, you, you described before, it's not that we will have easy lives, but I. I am optimistic that we will overcome them and become stronger on the way and resilient.
- [57:20]
B
Tal Shram, thank you so much for joining me. Welcome home.
- [57:24]
A
Thank you very much. Khalib, Sam.