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Foreign.
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You are listening to an art media podcast.
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The only way to actually impact Hamas is through the military action that we're taking. But I severely think that the military action, as effective as it will be against Hamas, will also bring about the execution of the hostages. That's my take on it professionally, but I'm not against the military action. I'm against the fact that I think that Hamas counteraction would be not only to execute them, but to do what they did a year ago, to film it, to put it out there, to totally tear us apart. Because we're going to blame ourselves for their executing the hostages.
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It's 9:00am on Wednesday, August 20th here in New York City. It's 4:00pm on Wednesday, august 20th in Israel as Israelis get ready to wind down their day. Before we start, one quick housekeeping note. If you are a subscriber to our Members Only feed inside Call me back. Make sure you're listening to this episode on your private feed. That's because right after this interview, Nadavael and I will take some listener questions, including this one. What is one thing that Israelis don't understand about Diaspora Jews? And what's one thing the Diaspora Jews don't understand about Israelis? This question opened up a really raw conversation between Nadav and me that gave me a lot to think about in real time as we hash this out. The Q and A is for members only, so if you are an inside Call Me Back member again, make sure you're listening on the inside Call Me Back feed or go to arc media.org to learn how to do that. If you haven't yet subscribed and want to become a member, follow the show notes or go to ark media.org again, that's ark media.org and now to today's episode. On Sunday, Hamas announced that it had agreed to a hostage ceasefire proposal just one day after Prime Minister Netanyahu declared Israel will not accept a partial hostage deal, that Israel wants to go straight to a full and final deal. Israeli officials are now reportedly reviewing the Hamas proposal. The this comes after Sunday's massive protests across Israel against the expansion of the war, with almost 500,000 people gathering in Tel Aviv's Hostage Square Sunday night, according to the event's organizers. But on Tuesday, the Hostage and Missing Families Forum announced that they are postponing another big protest originally scheduled for next Sunday in order not to disrupt the ongoing negotiations. For context, Prime Minister Netanyahu and many other Israeli leaders have consistently argued that that anti government demonstrations, especially in the midst of a negotiating process weaken Israel's negotiating position and therefore diminish the prospect of ending the war and seeing the hostages returned. As many pressure the prime minister to take any deal that's on the table, Others, including far right members of Netanyahu's government, are urging him to expand the war. Meanwhile, the IDF is continuing to prepare for a takeover of Gaza City should the deal not be realized. According to Israeli security officials, roughly 60,000 reservists are set to be called for duty starting Wednesday. In other news, Prime Minister Netanyahu issued a scathing criticism toward Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on X, stating, quote, history will remember Albanese for what he is, a weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia's Jews. Close quote. This comes after the Australian prime minister came out in support of a Palestinian state and the Australian government barred a member of Israel's Knesset and another Israeli national from visiting Australia, prompting Israel to revoke the residency visas of Australia's representatives to the Palestinian Authority. Joining us for today's conversation on what Israel is considering as it weighs whether to accept its hostage ceasefire deal or expand the Gaza war is Mary Eisen. Mary is a retired colonel in the IDF who spent her career in military intelligence. She also was an international spokesperson and an advisor to the prime Minister for the Israeli government during previous wars, and she also served in the IDF with current IDF Chief of Staff Eyel Zamir. Mary currently serves as a fellow at Reichman University's International Institute for Counterterrorism. She she's also the chair of the Taube center for Social Policy Studies. Miri, it's good to be with you.
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Thank you so much for inviting me, Mary.
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We haven't spoken in a while, so I just want to jump right into it. The IDF Chief of Staff Zamir is, according to reports, has approved plans ahead of the Gaza City offensive on a strategic level. What is your assessment of this offensive based on your, you know, having been in the a very important role in the IDF for many, many, many years, obviously the study on the academic side, the study of geopolitics and where you teach at Recman, I mean, you have a number of vantage points on this, just strategically, what's your sense of it.
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When we're talking about militarily taking over the Gaza Strip? It is a military operation. I'm not going to say it's easily done, not for the soldiers, not for the planners, certainly not for the Gazans. But it is absolutely achievable and doable. The question is the price. The price in that sense is how many Uninvolved, killed. How many soldiers will be killed? The Hamas, not just the terror operatives, terror army, but the broader Hamas basis inside that area of the Gaza Strip is not sitting around and just like, oh, yay, come and take us over. There are several ramifications. One is, what will they do with the hostages when you take over it? It isn't that now you're running, rushing, and getting to those 20 hostages that hopefully are still alive. And you have to take that into account. And it's exactly the yard site in a year since Hama brutally chose to execute six hostages rather than have Israeli forces get to them. And that was a year ago. And I say that because you can militarily do the act itself, take it over. You'll be in all of the Gaza Strip, but you can't prevent their killing the hostages. And you certainly cannot be sure of both how many casualties you're going to have on your side, on the Palestinian side. So I gave it in that zoom out kind of view, and I think that Zamir Eyaz. Zamir is an old friend, colleague. We actually got colonel together 25 years ago.
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I didn't know that was a verb. Colonel together.
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Colonel together. Right. Okay. We both did our first colonel positions parallel. He's a thinking man. He understands that. But this is not just about the military action. As I said, the military action is much more clear. It's about the other ramifications which have to do with negotiations with Hamas, let alone the involvement of the rest of the world, which are all sitting and looking at this with their eyes wide.
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Open and thinking strategically. Mary, I take your point. On the other hand, it has felt over the last few weeks that there has been this just incredible pressure mounting on Israel, all these governments recognizing a Palestinian state or planning to recognize a Palestinian state. You have the Australian government's actions, and there's similar actions going on in other governments. The French and the UK Government saying that if there's no deal, they're going to recognize a Palestinian state, almost incentivizing Hamas to not come to the table? So all of this has just been building and building against Israel. And strategically. Strategically, is there something to be said for Israel regaining its footing by saying, look, we still have the ability to take this action. We have agency here. We're not going to be rolled over. And actually, it's the way for Israel to kind of get the script back, which may explain why Hamas came back to the table.
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So I'm going to take that in two different stages. Israel already did that Israel already took the choice after the exchanges of January and February, when we got back the women that were still left in captivity, several of the different men, a few more of the bodies, and we went back onto the offensive. And I absolutely think that militarily it is very important not to let Hamas be the one defining the way of the path. They're not the ones who should be defining what happens. We're the ones who should be on the offensive against them. To me, the challenge is that we say Hamas. And Dan, what people are hearing is Palestinians. And we need to consistently make that distinction between our actions against Hamas, the terror organization, and the more or less two plus million people who live inside the Gaza troop. And even if they're supporters, that doesn't mean that they're all Hamas. And I put it out there right now because over the last 22 months, the recognition of Palestine as a state in the aftermath of the Hamas action, this is benefiting Hamas, not the Palestinians. It's legitimizing Hamas and at the exact same time delegitimizing Israel. And in this case, Israel's only capability for us to be on the offensive is through our military capabilities. And that's a terrible thing. All of the other countries don't want to impact Hamas. Everybody talks about the Palestinians, not about Hamas. Hamas holds the hostages. And in that sense, the only way to actually impact Hamas is through the military action that we're taking. But, and here's the big but, I severely think that the military action, as effective as it will be against Hamas, will also bring about the execution of the hostages. That's my take on it. Professionally. I don't know that. You don't know that. But I'm not ignoring against the military action. I'm against the fact that I think that Hamas's counteraction would be not only to execute them, but to do what they did a year ago, to film it, to put it out there, to totally tear us apart, because we're going to blame ourselves for their executing the hostages. It's horrible.
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Okay, I want to push back on that. I take your point that if Israel actually goes into Gaza, Gaza City, there is that risk. And we've talked about it a lot on this podcast. But the decision to go through the operation and actually implementing the operation or executing upon the operation are two different things. The decision to go and do the operation, the planning for the operation, the calling up the reservists, may be the reason that a deal is going to happen.
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Now, I'm not saying no, I'm even going to take you and up you on that one. Okay? Because I don't think that in a negotiation, Hamas will give back all of the hostages. I don't think that they have an interest to do so. Because for us, our strategic interest is our existence is our social fabric is our being here. And right now, Hamas's strategic interest in holding the hostages is because it tears us apart and because what they want to do is annihilate us. So I actually professionally will say that I don't think that when you're negotiating with them that I don't believe them. I don't think that they'll give them back because nobody pressures them. And the only pressure is when we do military pressure. So I'm contradicting myself. But that's where we are right now. That's why it's such a difficult decision. So, Dan, what are you supposed to do? How do you get them back? How do you end the war? And that's the hard choice, that at the end, we're a sovereign country. We're 10 million people. My kids serve, I serve. We're all serving. It's hitting our economy and the world vilifies us. So I'm going to put the world aside for a moment, but you need to get to an end to the war.
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Okay, I want to come back to that. I want to just stay on the possible deal. Hamas on Monday told mediators it had accepted the ceasefire hostage deal proposals I mentioned in the introduction. Based on your following all of this, what demands did Hamas backed down on since the last round of negotiations?
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A bit on the fact of where the Israeli troops would realign to. Meaning they're willing for not all of the hostages to still have a very high amount of life sentenced prisoners inside. Israeli prisoners be released. But they're willing for us not to leave all of the different positions that before they demanded. The demand themselves that they say of leaving all of the Gaza Strip, that's what they call all 50. For all Israeli troops out of the Gaza Strip, off of the Rafah, meaning Egyptian Gaza Strip border. That is for all of them. But right now what they've gone back from is that we've kind of bisected the Gaza Strip and it's about the little bits of where the actual troops would have to move back from. And that's the little bit that I've seen that's different. And again, all of this is based on what they're saying, and I don't believe them.
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I'm going to do something odd here, which is taking Hamas at its word, but taking Hamas at its word. For many months they demanded a full deal, as you said, all the hostages for the end of the. And basically implicitly leaving Hamas in some kind of control in Gaza. And Israel had been demanding these partial deals that would not end the war because Israel did not want to end the war until they had some kind of assurance that Hamas was gone and Gaza was disarmed. It seems the tables have turned now where Israel is demanding suddenly a full deal and Hamas is demanding a partial deal. What changed?
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Hamas understand that in the full deal and with everything being over their backers, not Qatar, maybe not Turkey, but the ones that will actually give money and help them, the ones that are right next to them, Egypt, Jordan, the Emirates, Bahrain, you know those countries that they need, they're not going to be there for them. That these are countries that have come out in a very clear cut way in the last two months, led by Egypt. They've made statements I have not heard before. They've made statements in Egyptian, in Arabic, meaning when I say in Arabic, but from Jordan and from Egypt, where I've heard in Arabic the leaders saying Hamas cannot rule. Not only that, but Hamas cannot have weapons. And there's a parallel aspect of what's happening right now inside Lebanon. And people look aside and see that happening there, where this new flaky as it may be government in Lebanon has been telling Hezbollah, you have to disarm. And that's something I never could have thought of before 2023. Are you kidding me?
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I can't imagine of this a year ago. I mean, it's just wild in terms of turn of events. And also, Nadava Yel, on the last episode of our podcast, talked about one of the senior political figures from the Iranian regime traveling to Lebanon in part to try to work with Hezbollah and rebuild them.
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Lara Jani, the foreign minister.
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Yeah, the foreign minister. Thank you. And the Lebanese government basically telling them to go fly kite.
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Totally. And this has an impact on Hamas.
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Meaning Hamas is now realizing they may be alone.
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Exactly.
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They used to be a beneficiary of this system.
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They thought if at the end they're standing and we'll talk in a moment about the fact that for them it's always going to be victory because they will exist afterwards. They may not be what they were before, but they'll exist. You can't erase them. But the difference of what's happening right now, that flip that you were talking about, that they want partial and we Want full is because they suddenly realize that the full actually means that everybody's going to be against them after that. And Israel has been very active and effective against the Hamas capabilities inside the west bank, inside Judea and Samaria, were very active there. Now none of these are things that make me happy, but its effectiveness and again, I want to emphasize that is against Hamas, the terror organization. It's not against the Palestinians. With all of my very challenging ways of looking at the prime minister when he spoke a week ago and he didn't use the word occupy the Gaza Strip and everybody noticed that I appreciated it to a certain extent because we don't want to occupy the Gaza Strip. Gaza Strip than 99% of Israelis. Okay, we don't. But you don't really have a different choice if you really want to try to push Hamas out of there and put something else instead. And I think right now Hamas understand that. And it's really important that it's a credible threat because otherwise you don't impact Hamas. And here to me, the worst part is I'm going to go protest this government and what am I going to do on a Sunday when everybody's, you know, striking inside Israel and you're like, you're part of that. I want to be there for the hostage families. But there's no question that the number you said of half a million Israelis protesting for the hostages does enable embolden Hamas. And I'm terrible, I hate that I'm saying that. I don't want to say that I want to go protest. I want this war to be over. And I say that because it's a double edged sword. The whole time the only losers here seem to be us, Israel. And no matter what we do, Hamas, not the Palestinians. Don't get this wrong. Hamas are the ones who win. The Palestinians lose all the time. They've been endless victims. And my heart can go out to them, but I. You can't let Hamas win. And in this case, I think that they understood that a full deal is actually not good for them.
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What you're saying, I'm just sort of processing this in real time as you're saying it. That had not considered that before, that Hamas is what it's most worried about in a full deal is being alone. The Arab League put out that statement critical of Hamas for the first time almost two years after October 7th. Finally they put out a strong statement. And there's a sense. I talked to officials and different capitals, more in the Sunni Gulf, but there's just a sense that they're just done. And so I can imagine that Hamas is sitting there thinking they're an island. Which then comes back to what is clearly tearing you apart, which I totally get, is in that world, the only insurance policy Hamas has are the hostages. I mean, I hate saying this, but, you know, there is a rationale, there's a precedent, which was Gilad Shalit, you know, holding a hostage for five years.
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Let me tell you, one of the worst parts. When you're studying terrorism and Hamas is a terror organization, and for all those out there, they're going to tell me they won the elections, won. A terror organization runs in politics. Wonderful listeners. It's a terror organization running in politics. It uses terror tactics against the other people. Yes, people vote for them and people support it. And that's a whole different aspect, that they're supporting that agenda that's calling for our annihilation. But right now, when you're looking at Hamas in that terror regime, it's written into it they want to do, Dan, is to terrorize us. And to terrorize us, all they have to do is pretty much continue with what they're doing. If right now, if. God, I don't want to say when, if they kill one hostage and they tell us that they've killed the hostage and they send a photo of the hostage in the state of Israel, we will blame our government. Great. For Hamas. So they're going to hold them forever. That's why, sadly, I understand the idea of the government of taking over all of the Gaza Strip. And I say it sadly, understand, doesn't mean I agree. And I'd rather get back right now, 10, alive and a partial, because I never believed that they would give all 50. And I'm like, you can get 10, get the 10, but what about the other 10? What do you tell them? What do you tell those families? And it's all in that handbook called the Terrorism Handbook. It's been done all over Africa. We just don't look. And when it happens to us here, we weren't ready. I don't even know to say that. But taking 256 hostages, genius.
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Before we move off this, how does the US from your perspective, from Israel's perspective, fit into this right now, this stage? Dilemma, Partial deal, full deal. Gaza operation, no Gaza operation.
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I'm not seeing them in it right now, not in the way that they were involved before. I think that the last thing I am going to assess, even with you, Dan, is any action of the US Administration as it is right now. I Don't know what will be today or tomorrow. I wait and see. What I do see the most is the backing of the administration to Prime Minister Netanyahu and the cabinet. It gives a backing to the government to take actions that they may not have done because of the public uproar. And the worst part is that I think we. Israel. I just got back from the States, and I'm in the States a lot. And over the last 22 months, the United States of America that I was born and Dan, my parents immigrated to here. And over the last 22 months, I am seeing. It's hard to believe. It's appalling. In the younger generation, we're viewed as the. Not the Dennis the Menace cute guy, as the evil strong with a lot of other terms that go with that. And I talk to people and I say, you know, you're talking about me. And they say, no, no, not you, the Israelis. And I'm like, that's me. No, no, the soldiers. I'm like, that's me. No, no, the young soldiers. I'm like, that's my kids. And that gap there is a really big one.
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Okay, I want to talk with our remaining few minutes here about a few other fronts. Syria confirmed yesterday that talks with Israel have been underway. In Paris, the Lebanese government announced that it has launched a process to disarm Hezbollah with a potential deal to end the war in Gaza. As we're talking about, how do you see those pieces coming together in any. Is there, like, a strategic outcome here that takes all these various borders and hotspots and kind of ties them all together?
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One of the biggest gaps between the way everybody views this war and the way I look at it from here is exactly on the question that you asked, because what's happening in the Gaza Strip, in the hostages is totally connected to what's happening in Lebanon, to what's happening in Syria, for that matter, in Iran and in all of our arena. Meaning you couldn't get to negotiations about the hostages in the way that we have been doing to that exchange of January, February, in my professional opinion, until we'd taken care of Hezbollah and we didn't know when we were taking care of Hezboll much that would impact Lebanon. Lebanon has a government. They have a president. They hadn't had one for years because of Hezbollah. That that new president who used to be the chief of the military, that the new prime minister who hates Israel and the speaker of the House was always the same guy. He's been forever. But that troika are against Iran. I'm like, oh, my God, what has happened in Lebanon and in our actions against Hezbollah last year, 2024, which again brought about the negotiations from my point of view, that allowed and enabled the hostages to come out in January, February of 2025. It also brought about the change in Syria. It's crazy. I don't know if you're aware of it, but the minister of foreign affairs from Iran came to visit Lebanon and when he flew. You fly over Iraq in the direct ways you fly Iraq, Syria, Lebanon. The Syrian air control in 2025 would not let the Iranian foreign minister go over its airspace. I'm like, I'm in a new world, right? That doesn't mean that that Syrian new government is something that makes me calm and happy. So now I'm going to do my negatives because to me it's very important. The new Lebanese government hates Israel, but damn, they hate Iran and Hezbollah more. The new Syrian government, many of them are jihadi, about Jews, Israel, whatever you want, but they hate Iran more. Can we take a win right now? Can we enjoy the fact that there are two government after Bashar Assad and after Hezbollah with Hassan as Saleh ran everything inside Lebanon. Oh, my God, what a change. Now in Israel, they said that it was Ron Dermer who went to meet.
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The Syrian foreign minister.
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Syrian Foreign Minister Shah Abani in France. I read what the Syrians put out about that. They said that they met Israeli minister. I think that for Israel, stable Lebanon is better than unstable Lebanon with Hezbollah strong. And I think that stable Syria is better than unstable Syria under war in any Syria under the Assad family. 54 years of the dictatorship. That doesn't mean that they're going to sign a peace treaty and be with us. It isn't easy and simple, but as I said, let's take a win for the moment. Two different governments that are working together against the Islamic regime of Iran, that are working together against Hezbollah's military capability. They're stopping weapons from Iran to Lebanon that's going through Syria. They're stopping the weapons. That's unheard of. These are good things that we should know how to take. And yes, they impact the capability to what we can do with Hamas. I don't want the new Syrian government to back Hamas, okay? I want to hear them on the same page as the Egyptian leadership, Jordanian leadership. The Hamas is Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey is a different version of Muslim Brotherhood. And the question is what this new Syria will be because it's Sunni now. It came out of Very jihadi places, certainly Ahmed Al Shara, Abu Muhammad Al Julani, but there are all sorts of figures around him, and I don't know where they're going to go. But if they just go to Muslim Brotherhood, that'll be our future challenge.
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B
But just before we wrap here, Mary, what do you think Israel then is trying to achieve in the near to medium term in some kind of negotiation with the new Syrian government?
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So first I'm going to say I don't know, because I know what I would be looking at. I'm not sure that they're looking at the same thing. And this isn't that I'm right and they're wrong. Just don't know. I think that the first challenge in that sense is to stabilize the fact that jihadis took over Syria. And now those jihadis, Abu Muhammad Al Julani, you know, Hayatahir Hashem, those were real jihadi. They call for the annihilation of Western civilization, of the United States, the big devil, and Israel, the little devil. So it's one thing is to try to figure out what is this new regime. And if this new regime is not jihad, it's only what you call Sunni, it's to arrive at some kind of stalemate. I really do think you want stability. Chaos is bad for us, and it helps to have stability there. But we don't want to be those who are helping to stabilize a country that is going to attack us because they're jihadi. So in that balance, I think that you want to go, you want to feel it out, you want to understand better. I think that Europe is on the rush when it comes to Syria, just like any other place in the world. It's all about domestic politics. Germany has a good 750,000 Syrians. They want them to go back. Turkey has over 3 million. And I think that Israel has 125,000 Druze. That's just Israeli citizens. An additional 25,000 on the Golan Heights, okay, that most of them are not citizens. They're residents on the Israeli Golan Heights. And that issue of the Druze inside Merkaza, Likud inside Israel, that Druze voice is going to say, let's protect our Druze brethren. And I'm here we are, okay? Syrian Druze, Lebanese Druze, Israeli Druze. And within all of that, you want to find a balancing point where you feel secure that there won't be jihadis on the other side that are going to come and attack us like in October 7th. And that goes for the Syrian border. For the Lebanese border. We have to look at them. All the hatred we're seeing worldwide is just as bad in the Middle East. So here we are.
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B
I try, when possible, it's been harder and harder, most recently to end on a high note. But I do think your point about in a world in which the Iranian foreign minister can't fly over Syrian airspace because the Syrians won't allow it in order to get to Lebanon and other examples like that is just take a moment and say, wow, we are in a new world.
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We are in a new world. When the president of Lebanon says that Hezbollah has to disarm and he's not yet killed, wow, we're in a new world.
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B
All right, Miri, thank you. Look forward to having you back on and hopefully seeing you soon. I appreciate you doing this.
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Thank you so much and that everybody should have a good day.
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B
This is it for our regular Call Me Back episode. For those of you listening on the Members Only Inside Call Me Back feed, Stick around because NEDAV EAL is about to join to answer listener questions. We'll discuss whether there's a future for the Jewish diaspora, how Hamas keeps rearming itself, and why Israel isn't letting reporters into Gaza. If you are not yet subscribed to Inside Call Me Back, you can do so using the link in the show notes or by going to ark media.org that is ark media.org to sign up. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti Sound and video editing by Martin Juergo and Marian Khalis Burgos. Our director of operations, Maya Rockoff. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.
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Sam.