C (4:54)
So, thank you. It's lovely to be with the two of you on the stage. And I feel like I have to start, Dan, by just saying, you know, I've said this to you personally, but I want to say in front of a group of people, how much call me back has meant to the Jewish world. You may have thought you were launching a podcast, but you were creating a community of, I think, especially after October 7th, Jews who felt alone and divided and not sure how to hold things together. And the role you played was incredible. Thank you. So, I mean, I've lived in Israel for about over 30 years now, but I still haven't acquired that Israeli characteristic of speaking with certainty about things you can't know. Well, I think there are two things to say with respect to the direction we're headed in Gaza in particular. The first thing, I think it's fair to say that even if Simoir were to say that Hamas at the moment primarily is not a threat to Israel, it's a threat to Palestinians, it's a threat to the capacity for any kind of alternative governments to emerge. And a challenge fundamentally of phase two of the Trump Plan is can it succeed in creating the conditions genuinely for disarmament, demilitarization, and an alternative Palestinian governance to emerge over time? And how you feel about that really depends on an assumption that nobody knows the answer to. There's no university, you can get a degree in it. There is one group of people who think that only the IDF can disown Hamas. And that group of people, significantly, was in the Israeli government for a long time and thought the war should just continue to achieve that objective. There's a second group, I think, who believe that now the isf, the International Stabilization Force, if it comes into being, given all the success that Israel has had militarily and the pressure of Israel being in 53% of the west bank and only withdrawing if there is development and the linkage between reconstruction and demilitarization and the pressure maybe of the Arab world, these things altogether can disarm Hamas. And then there is a third view which says essentially there is no such thing as Gaza devout from us. There's no really such thing as Palestinian society without some element of what they would call resistance. We consider, and rightly terrorism. And then the question is only how much capacity did I have to shape the Egypt? And where you fall on those three really depends on what you're thinking. It's going to look like if December, January and so on. We Israelis have more than a healthy dose of cynicism and pessimism in the way we tend to analyze things. Israelis, I think, tend to think cynicism or pessimism and wisdom are the same in theme. And in the Middle east, you're not always off that you have that assumption. But I think right now our posture is let's give a chance to the Trump player. The last thing I'll say, I don't want to talk too much, is that another thing Tsinghua might tell you beyond Talking about in December 2025, Varian he said, you might think you won in the midd least, but you lost in the West. And what matters more And I do think that we need to ask ourselves whether, from a national security perspective, at the moment, Israel is more challenged in the west than it is in the Middle East. We're in a bizarre moment. I'm not sure how long it will last. Where we used to rely on the west to support us in confronting our enemies in the Middle east, now with the help of the US we have confronted our enemies in the Middle East. They're still there. They're not going anywhere. They may come back, but there is an opportunity to shift things in a different direction. And then we look to the west and we ask ourselves, are you still with us? I was just in the uae, in the Emirates, and one of the young Emirati put their hand up and said, why do you spend so much time talking about the West? Why do you even bother? Why is everyone criticizing Israel's public diplomacy? Don't you know the west is lost? And so I think Sinwar Mike said that, and that may have a more difficult answer to it. I feel like I want to tell a story to this audience very briefly. Some of you may know, but I think it speaks to the Israeli spirit. It's about Bar Kupershtim's mother. If you haven't heard this story, it's worth knowing. Bar Kupishtim was one of the hostages released in this last round. Of the 20 hostages being released, Bar tells a story that one of the Hamas terrorists who was holding him called Hizbaba and said to her, you are not protesting enough against the government. We expect to see you out on the streets. We want you to go to the Hague and protest in the Hague. We have your son in our hands. And if you want to see your son again, we want to see you protest. She responds in an instant, you do not have my son in your hands. God has my son in his hands. And God has you in his hands as well. Dead silence on the other end of the line. And then the Hamas terrorist says, So when you have mothers like that in Israeli society, there's something you know about Israeli society that's just incredible. Now, to your point, Dan. So at some level, I think, yes, it's true, and Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke about it today, in fact, that Israel be a military success story. It's defense tech, its resilience of its society. These things matter a great deal for Israel's relations in the region, for their relations in the world. And I think you can make the case, as you said, that as the war recedes, we hope, and as things shift in the news, then Israel, there'll be some kind of correction. Here's why I'm a little worried about it more than the way he described it, maybe, I'll say. A few months ago, a young student from Connecticut actually came up to me and she said, I'm a rich, white Jewish girl. I have a cloud of oppressor class hanging over my head. Nothing you say to me is interesting. I'm not interested in Tal Mecca's talking points because that does not remove the cloud from my head. The only thing that removes the cloud from my head is if I'm anti Israel and dilute my Jewish identity on campus. And I want you to understand, while that is saddening and it's important for people like me, the recovering lawyers, and all of us who think that we affect people by effective arguments, what matters fundamentally, especially for a younger generation, especially in the era of social media, is what is socially acceptable, what is cool, and what is not cool. And this student is basically saying to me, your arguments won't matter, because in my social circle, associating with Israel is a costly, embedded. And I think you mentioned Sinwar. If we took Khamenei aside and we asked him, you know, how was your last year and a half? He would say, I didn't have such a good year. But where I get comfort, he would say, is that the cost of association with Israel in the west has gone up tremendously. If you pull someone off the street today and you say to the word, say to them, name the first word that comes to your mind. When I say the next word, Israel, what are you going to hear? I think you're probably not going to like what you're going to hear in many, many streets and many cathedrals. Now the question is, can that be changed? Can that dynamic be changed because of interests? You know, there's a famous saying that politics is downstream of culture, and if the association people have socially with Israel remains problematic, that will have expressions in a lot of different places. So it's not something we could be nonchalant about and say, well, as the war proceeds, this will change. So I think the challenge is a lot bigger. And it really goes back to the idea of how this new generation forms their opinions as opposed to, that's it.
