← Call Me Back - with Dan Senor
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- [00:04]
A
You are listening to an art media podcast. Last week, Nadavael joined me on our members only show, Inside Call Me Back to answer listener questions. The first question was, what's one thing that Israelis don't get about Diaspora Jews? And what's one thing that Diaspora Jews don't get about Israelis? This led to a riveting discussion about the nature of the Israel versus Diaspora divide. Then Nadav and I considered turning it into a full, separate episode, but instead, we decided to make that segment of the conversation public and share it with our listeners. So here it is. It's a small taste of the kind of conversations we have been having on Inside Call Me Back. This specific conversation with Nadav continued beyond this teaser, by the way. We also answered listener questions about the future of the remaining hostages and how Hamas manages to continue to rearm. So if you want to hear the full episode, you can become a member by following the link in the show notes or go to arcmedia.org that's ark media.org hi, Nadav.
- [01:25]
B
Hi, Dan.
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A
All right, we're going to jump into it, Nadav.
- [01:28]
B
No, first of all, I want to say how excited I am, you know, to speak with the insiders of Call Me Back. I just did a couple of events across the country in the US And I had a chance to meet people who actually signed up, and I know they're excited. So it's my first time, and I hope I'm not going to disappoint you. Not you, Dan.
- [01:48]
A
I don't think you will.
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B
I mean, not you, Dan. I didn't need you. I. I meant the people listening. Okay, go.
- [01:53]
A
I don't think you're gonna disappoint because I'll say, for every episode we record, every formal episode we record on the regular podcast, we have many conversations as we think about issues, compare notes, talk about possible episodes. And those are always interesting, sometimes more interesting than the actual episodes. So I'm hoping we can capture some of that here. So just treat it like that, Nadav. Treat it like we're free flowing with.
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B
All the gossip and everything else.
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A
Exactly. Do it all. Empty your notebook. Empty your notebook right into this conversation. Just dump the who thing in all the stuff that says off the record. You know, swore to secrecy. I would not cite anywhere publicly all of that. Just. This is the vault for that.
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B
By the way, I did get a phone call about our last chapter. About stuff.
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A
Our last episode. By the way. We're going to fix this, Nadav. You keep calling our episodes chapters because.
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B
I'm first And foremost, a written journalist.
- [02:46]
A
Yes.
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B
You know, I write in a newspaper and that's the reason. But in our previous episode that was open for everybody, not just for the insiders. I, I said some stuff. And I did get a phone call afterwards. I did.
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A
Yeah.
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B
I can't say about what.
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A
Right.
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B
A cautionary phone call about when you said that. We're not sure that you should have said it the way that you said it, but we're on the safe side anyway.
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A
All right.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So all that caution, just throw it to the wind for this conversation.
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B
Okay.
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A
Okay. First question is from Sarah Silver. It's a terrific question. She writes. Sarah writes, what is one thing Israeli Jews don't get about Diaspora Jews? And what is one thing that Diaspora Jews don't get about Israelis? And why.
- [03:29]
B
So I want to tell you, Sarah, that I've been thinking about this question in the last year and a half since coming on Call me Back. And also having much more interaction since the beginning of the war with communities abroad within Diaspora and specifically with the Jewish community, you, the United States. And my answer is what Israeli Jews don't understand about Jews in the Diaspora is that they're a minority and they simply cannot comprehend what it means to grow up and to manage your life, to lead your life as a minority group. And Israeli Jews assume, since they are immersed within the Israeli narrative of Zionism after the Holocaust, assume they understand American Jews. And as an Israeli Jew, I'm saying this, we really don't because we didn't grow up as a minority. We grew up as a majority group. And the way that Israelis walk and talk in the world and the type of confidence that you sometimes see, the type of a very specific Israeli chutzpah is very much related to Israeli Jews being a majority group. And what Israeli Jews do not understand is that it is very different when you lead your life as a community that knows sometimes, you know, just at the back of the head, but today, these days, definitely not at the back of our heads, that antisemitism is out there and that most people you meet in the street are not Jews and they do not share your history, your community, and of course, your religion. And this thing is also transcribed to the other part of the question of what Jewish Americans don't understand about Israeli Jews. They do not understand this discourse that is of a majority group. Israelis see a demonstration against Israel unless you tell them they're going to come and confront. I'll give you one specific example. Just because it's between you and me and the insiders of this conversation. When I see what's happening on US campuses, my initial response as an Israeli is fight, fight, fight. But you know what? This is where my bias comes in, you know, because what you can get down when you have your own country and you live as a majority in your own country is very different than a minority that walks in the streets and knows deep down that this can all shift against him. And for American Jews, I think that they don't get that about Israeli Jews. So both sides are trying because they do have relations and they feel this closeness, this both spiritual and communal closeness. They try to bridge this by somehow saying, we're the same, you know, all we have is each other. Which is very true. And this is my message when I talk with American audiences. And we're very different and we think about the world in a different way. This also goes to the importance of the Diaspora. What Israeli Jews do not get, and I'm focusing on that because I'm an Israeli Jew and I'll be happy to hear your thoughts about this, is that it's the Diaspora mentality that was seen by Zionism as something that needs to end. There is a sentence in Hebrew it says, it's a very difficult sentence. It means to overcome the shame of the Gallus of the Diaspora. It's sort of condemning the life in the Diaspora. And what Israeli Jews don't understand is the Diaspora is the Jewish people. The Diaspora is the Jewish culture. There is nothing else. Two thousand years, the community of the Jewish people was founded not in the temple in Jerusalem, but after the destruction of the Temple and in the Diaspora. This is the real Jewish people, historically speaking. Because if you are a minority, for instance, you're very sensitive to other minorities, you're very sensitive to injustices, you're very sensitive to discrimination. If you're a minority in America and you hear this sentence about people holding to money and power, you automatically understand that they're talking about Jews, that this is dog whistling about Jews. When Israelis hear people holding money and power, they don't have this instinct. We can spend an entire episode just.
- [08:07]
A
Talking about it would be an amazing episode. You said something. So one of the issues that I constantly hear from Diaspora Jews, constantly is how bad Israelis are at telling their story. Diaspora Jews want Israelis to tell their story. Diaspora Jews, you're looking at one. We spend a lot of our time telling the Israeli story, but we get so frustrated that Israel doesn't tell Israel's story in good times and bad, wartime and peacetime. I mean, you And I got into a little bit of a heated conversation about it in our last episode about the food crisis in Gaza and how Israel mismatched. You know, there's this constant, like, frustration over here with how badly Israel handled its own communications with the world. And it just occurred to me in something you said that I had not really thought of, which is, it's a, it's both a feature and in this case a bug of being a majority in your own country because Israelis in their day to day lives, they don't think about telling their story because there's, you're in your own country, whereas if you're a supporter of Israel, living in the diaspora, you are constantly under siege. If you're, if you're public facing in your support for Israel, especially since October 7th, you're fixated on this, whereas Israelis just don't think about how to explain that. By the way, you give me a hard time and you're not the only one about what you often characterize as a, shall we say, a bias towards a soft defense of Prime Minister Netanyahu or going out of my way to give him the benefit of the doubt, which I will say I think no.
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B
Actually, if you're opening it up and you know, this kind of conversation, I have to say, you pushing back about Netanyahu, I feel is you doing what you need to do. Dan, I don't think that you have a personal vested sort of interest or you need to push back because, you know, I'm critical of BB and you know, if you were a professional journalist, I would expect you to do the same, to sit down.
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A
That's not the only reason I do it. The, the, the other reason I do it is because I don't think Israelis appreciate that, you know, love Bibi, hate Bibi. I don't think most Israelis appreciate that. For many Diaspora Jews, certainly of a certain generation mine, Bibi was one of the only Israelis that was out there engaging with the Western media, making the case for Israel literally like the only one. It's not to say others didn't try to do it. It's not to say that others sometimes were effective. But he, as you know, built much of his career as the guy who could actually do all the things I was saying before Israelis generally don't do. I remember going all the way Back to the first intifada. I remember Nightline, Ted Koppel's Nightline. Every night, 11:30, it was Bibi who was going on and fighting with Hanan Hashrari and debating with her and he was the David. When Bibi was. At that time, he was deputy foreign minister, deputy foreign minister. The foreign minister was David Levy, who didn't speak a word of English. So Israel had a foreign minister that did not speak a word of English. He spoke French. And the prime minister, which was Yitzhak Shamir, who I guess could communicate to some degree in English, but he wasn't very effective. And then that proceeded for decades. And that brings me to my next point, which is that while your messy democracy is playing out and it's vibrant and messy in all the best and worst possible ways, as vibrant democracies are, that messy democracy plays out often in vitriolic condemnations by the citizenry of its government. And that makes life a lot harder for the diaspora. Not that that's your problem and not that that's what Israelis should be focused on. But I cannot tell you how many times I've gone on TV in the US And I'll be like, I remember, like being on CNBC one morning on Squawk Box, and I'm defending Israel, and the anchor is presenting to me all these criticism of Israel. I'm defending them. And I'm. And I'm really trying to discredit these charges. And the anchor says, dan, look, the Israelis are saying this. There's, you know, tens of thousands of Israelis marching in the streets. They're saying these things. I'm just quoting them.
- [12:10]
B
But here I want to say something about that. And that's a constant conversation between the two of us, just behind the scenes. And I think it's an important conversation. It goes to the seed that I spoke about, about seeing Israel as a real country. In a real country, you have an opposition, and the opposition wants to take power. And it doesn't care about how this is going to influence the image of the country abroad. It doesn't have a directorate of the Jewish people that says, oh, now the position in Israel needs to be much more subsided, silent, because it's not good internationally for the country. And to some extent, it also goes to the policies of the government. So you're speaking about the opposition, but the question is really, you know, when an Israeli minister, Israeli cabinet, says something incredibly stupid or cruel like, we're going to destroy, you know, we're going to burn everything, all the rest, you know, how does it interact with the existence of Jewish communities? This is the question I'm getting because, you know, MSNBC and these guys, when they see I just saw Rachel Meadow do an entire monologue on MSNBC on The demonstrations in Israel. And she was so positive about Israelis against the government. And in the liberal wing of American politics, this differentiation between the government and the people, you know, some progressive won't bind to it because for them everything is illegitimate. Right. So the Zionist project in Eretz Yisrael was always about something. Building something that is a dissonance is a paradox. To have a nation among nations, a nation like any other nation, and to be also a shining city on the hill, this was always there, Right?
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A
I know, I know.
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B
The expression is orlagoym. Yes. This is one thing, a nation like any other nation, that's not a shining city on the hill. We wanted to do both. And this dissonance is there from the beginning. What it never wanted to do is to say that Diaspora is there and it's going to exist. And it's part of the strengths of the Jewish people. And actually, you cannot imagine Israel without the Diaspora because it's a product of the Diaspora. It's not the product of the Bible, it's a product of the Diaspora. It's or both. And this is something that was never acknowledged, you know, the importance of the Diaspora for the existence of the Jewish people. Or in other words, if you come to Ben Gurion and you tell him tomorrow morning the Diaspora disappears and all the Jews would have come to Israel, is this a good thing for the Jewish people and for Medinat Israel? And Ben Guriel would have said, absolutely, this is my aim. And if that would have happened in 1956, I'm not sure that we would have had an Israel today.
- [15:17]
A
It's a discussion I've had with my sister. My sister met Aliya in 1994, and when she was getting ready to move, there were many. Wendy Singer. There are many. She's been on the podcast. There were colleagues of hers who were saying, if you care so much about Israel, won't you be more effective with your skill set in the United States, being an advocate for Israel, for the US Israel relationship, rather than living in Israel? And she argued she wants to be involved in building Israel, and that means building her life in Israel and being integrated into Israeli life. And you raise a good question, what if everyone thought that and then there was no diaspora? And actually, a question I was going to ask you further on in this conversation was a question we received from Zoe from Melbourne, Australia. And she asked, and I'm quoting here, as a proud religious young Australian Jew, I increasingly feel that our community won't endure. To me, the natural response is to make Aliyah and build my future in Israel. But Israel isn't my obligation to fight for my diaspora community. What is the importance of Diaspora Jews for Israel? So we're basically actually answering this question. I've been thinking about this point a lot recently because I'm traveling to France soon and I got a briefing last week from someone in France who's telling me that Jews cannot walk anywhere in France with any kind of public or yarmulkendavid. They can't go on public transportation. None of it. It's not even like a conversation. You just don't do it. It's really, really bad on the one hand. On the other hand, there's a flourishing French Jewish community in Israel now and it's only going to grow. And I sit there thinking a lot of these, the big parts of these French, this French Jewish community is a very talented community. It's probably great for Israel for many of these French to move to Israel. On the other hand, what is left of France, you know, what is left of the uk?
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B
I want to give a short answer to the question at hand. Do whatever is best for your kids future and maintain your Jewish identity. And as a Zionist, I still think, you know, that Eretz Yisrael is the best way to go about it. I need to say something that my late grandmother, who was a sabra herself a daughter to Pioneers, she told me, and this is heavily debated, what I'm going to say is heavily debated within Zionism, between religious Zionism and secular Zionism. She told me, remember this was a rational choice. It was never about a Masonic kind of endeavor. It was her faction, but it was the total majority of over 90%. She always told me we need to do what is best for the preservation. And this is why in two instances Jewish life was destroyed. One of them was in Portugal. 15th, 16th century Jews were not allowed to leave and they were forced to convert to Christianity or get killed. Unlike the expulsion of Spain, the Portuguese Jewish community, almost all of it generally was destroyed. And of course it happened again in the Holocaust. In both cases, Jews were not allowed to move. And the freedom of movement, even if you need to buy your way out, was always a signature of Jewish preservation, existence and survival over the centuries. And Jews did what was most important to the future of their kids while maintaining their identity. And that's my answer.
- [18:43]
A
I remember someone in our family talking to my sister and brother in law to Wendy and Saul about making aliyah. And I vividly remember Saul. They were doing it, they wanted to do it as an act of solidarity with Israel. It was during actually the second intifada. Things were so bad during the second intifada. Some of our family was thinking about moving. Should I move? I want to move. I want to stand with Israel. And he said, Saul said, don't do it. To show solidarity. Ask yourself this question. Where do you want to raise your kids? That's the question. Where do you want to raise your kids?
- [19:13]
B
And you know what? It's also the Zionist answer. The Zionist answer was never, we're going to create a Sparta. It's going to be misery, but it's the fate of the Jews to live in Eretz Yisrael. The Zionist answer was, we are going to create here a society that would be better, they thought, egalitarian means and others, than any other society in the world. It's going to be a better life. And they never let go. Even with all the wars and all these constant threats of annihilation, they never let go of the idea that they are building what they called hevrame tukenet, which literally is translated as a corrected society, the right society. And that means that, for instance, healthcare existed in Eretz Israel for the Jewish community much before the inception of the state. That meant that women got the right to vote in Eretz Yisrael in Jewish community institutions before any other country in the world, I think, other than one or two. Much before, you know, we saw this in the United States, for instance. They tried to create a place that will draw Jews not because of ideology, but because of the creation of a new society.
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A
Yeah, that's very powerful. I will just add, before we move on, with all the migration to Israel from the Diaspora over the last several decades, I think there are also so many Jews in the Diaspora who have these personal connections, very personal. A nephew, a brother, a cousin, a friend. And so if you think about the large number of Israelis, there's a percentage of Israeli society that are fighting in this war, right? Well, over 300,000 Israelis, higher percentage of Israeli society than Americans who fought in World War II. I mean, they had so many touch points to the Diaspora, not just at a peoplehood level, but at a personal level. So I sometimes hear Israelis feel like, who's the Diaspora? To question what we're doing on this or that. You know, we're the ones who are on the front lines. It's our loved ones that are fighting. And I would just say, I would tell my Israeli friends, think twice before you say that. Because for many of the people in the Diaspora, it's their loved ones too, that are literally on the front lines. Like they're actually I'm struck by how many people in the diaspora I meet these days who know someone at a very personal and familial level that has fought in this war or sacrificed lost in this war. I think the connection is deeper than we sometimes appreciate. This is it for our sneak peek. If you found this interesting and want to hear more while also supporting our mission, please subscribe to our weekly members only show Inside Call Me Back. This week I'll be on the hot seat taking listener questions, including whether a two state solution is a viable end for the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Inside Call Me Back will come out every week as an extension of the Thursday episode. To subscribe, please follow the link in the show notes or go to ark media.org that's ark media.org 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.